Laura Husar Garcia was born into a family of storytellers. At age 7, she brought her camera on adventures alongside her father, who was a writer. On Sunday mornings she spun the family globe and wherever her finger landed, that was the Chicago ethnic neighborhood they explored for the day. Her father wrote stories about the people they met, and Laura took pictures with her Kodak Instamatic, telling stories with her camera. Her passion for visual storytelling led to a career as a photographer.
She has documented the intimacies of the human spirit and the beauty of nature for more than 25 years. Laura's photography has been exhibited widely, including The Biennial of Fine Art and Documentary Photography in Prague, Fotofever at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, France, The Polish Museum of America in Chicago, Fotofest Biennial in Houston, Texas, Photo Independent in Los Angeles, California, The Rangefinder Gallery in Chicago, Tilt Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, among others.
Laura is the first place winner of the International 2017 Julia Margaret Cameron Photography Award for Women in the Landscapes and Seascapes category. She is also a co-winner of a 1st place Community Grant from the Illinois Humanities Council and a 2015 Photolucida Critical Mass top 200 finalist. Her photographs have been published in several books, including “America At Home: A Close-up Look at How We Live”, which is one of the largest collaborative photography projects in publishing history. Laura's work has also been published in The New York Times, National Geographic Magazine and Newsweek, Slate Magazine and several other publications and books. She has been a photo editor for various workshops including The Chicago Photography Center and a portfolio reviewer at Columbia College in Chicago. Laura was a photographer in Santa Fe, NM, for more than ten years, where her foundation as an artist took root, before moving to Chicago where she became a photo editor at The Chicago Tribune.
She lives in the Chicagoland area with her husband Alex, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, her two children and her yellow lab, Blue.
