In this video I want to take a look at the work of Laura Wilson and I believe that Laura is one of the finest American photographers working today.

She's had a very long 40 year plus career doing editorial work. She actually started her career as Richard Avidon's research assistant on his

in the American West series and went on to have her own success much later.

Laura has a wide range to what she does. Sometimes these images are beautiful, sometimes they're kind of whimsical,

have an element of surprise, and at other times they're downright violent and disturbing. And I think a lot of that speaks to the

range that Laura is able to work with.

And I'm actually going to reference two books today.

She has a book that she wrote about her time

with Richard Avodon called Avodon at work.

And we're going to talk less about this one today.

I want to do this when we get more into Richard Avodon later, but I do want to say, as with photo books, these things go out of print. This one, I believe, is no longer in print. And so if you want to order it, you can still find it, but now it's the time to do it.

The other book that I want to look at is the catalog from her current exhibition at the

Aiman Carter Museum, and this is called That Day.

So without further ado, let's go look at the work of Laura Wilson.

To give you a little bit of context for looking at Laura Wilson's work, I want to begin with

Richard Avodon.

She was Richard Avidon's research assistant on his In The American West project, which is a multi-year major project that he began in the late 70s.

And if you consider how Western art was typically portrayed,

if you go back and look at painters like Remington and Russell or even early photographers like Timothy of Sullivan,

typically what we see are these lush expansive landscapes that define the American West and they're largely devoid of people or population and there is a specific look even when you do have

portraits of people in them they're usually set in this vast landscape and what

Avodon did with his work was a complete divorce from that.

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