The Amon Carter Museum of American Art recently presented That Day: Laura Wilson, a highly successful exhibit that ran September 5, 2015, through February 14, 2016. The exhibition of 72 photographs by Laura Wilson introduced the artist’s vision of the American West as a compelling and complex land filled with fiercely independent people. The show had record attendances of more than 28,000 visitors.
“Through her photographs, Wilson asks us to recognize the West that is ... a place where diverse lives can and do coexist,” said John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum. This diversity is explored through subjects ranging from the Hutterites in Montana to the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota, to people along the US-Mexico border and ranchers and cowboys in the West.
“I am drawn to people who live in an enclosed world—those people who live in isolated communities, whether by circumstance or accomplishment; I was curious about these groups and wanted to know more,” says Wilson. “I don’t mean to say one way of life is better than another but merely to say that my wish, as Eudora Welty wrote, ‘would be not to point the finger in judgment but to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.’ ”
Wilson’s interest in the American West began when she was a child in New England and continued to develop when she moved to Texas in 1966. In 1979 she was hired to assist Richard Avedon (1923–2004) with the now classic In the American West project. Over the six years she worked with Avedon, she traveled throughout the West practicing her own photographic documentation of him at work.
Laura Wilson’s work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Washington Post Magazine and London’s Sunday Times Magazine. She is the author of five books—Hutterites of Montana (Yale University Press, 2000), Watt Matthews of Lambshead (Texas Historical Association, 1989), Avedon at Work (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center/University of Texas Press, 2003), Grit and Glory (Bright Sky Press, 2003) and That Day, Pictures in the American West (The Clements Center at SMU with Yale University Press, 2015). Wilson is currently working on two projects, one documents preeminent writers in the United States and abroad—men and women who will have a lasting literary legacy; and the second documents Hollywood directors, screenwriters, cinematographers and actors behind the scenes.
This exhibition is accompanied by the book, That Day: Pictures in the American West published by Yale University Press, which retails for $50.
Her work is currently available to exhibit and can accommodate any size space. Contact Jennifer Henderson at 817-335-0100 for more information.

What Was Said:
A dramatic year in the visual arts in Texas, Rick Brettell chose the exhibition That Day: Laura Wilson as "...one of the top five of 2015. Wilson has made powerful images imbued with a stubborn humanism — the pictorial embodiment of her respect for the diverse men and women who live in the hardscrabble environments she prefers." - Rick Brettell, Art Critic, Dallas Morning News (link)

"Laura Wilson has an ever-searching eye for the bleak beauty of the West – for it's bleak reality, too. These singular photographs mirror her admiration for the stubborn strength of those who occupy such hard places. It's a remarkable book." - Larry McMurtry

“That Day,” ... clearly establishes Wilson as one of the foremost visual chroniclers of the modern-day West. - Skip Hollandsworth, Executive Editor, Texas Monthly (link)

"It is not surprising, then, that it is through Wilson ... that the West takes a form that feels both familiar and foreign, exploiting photography’s power to convey a sense of intimacy with subjects we might otherwise avoid or not notice. - Peter Simek, Arts Editor, D Magazine (link)

"Laura Wilson is an important and renowned American photographer in her own right."
- Dana Joseph, Editorial Director, Cowboys & Indians (link)

MORE INFO: http://www.laurawilsonphotography.com/biography.php