Photographer Laura M. Brown

Now showing at The Artists’ Niche Co-op Gallery

Shara Johmson

06/05/2008 - A life full of travel and adventure has finally led Laura MacAlister Brown to the Artists’ Niche Co-op Gallery in Nederland, where she now displays some of her photography images of Africa.   Though Africa is where her current research takes her, she’s seen many other interesting nooks of the world.

  After graduating from high school on the East Coast, Laura traveled to Europe and lived in the Netherlands for a year, working as a nanny. The first line of interest she pursued upon her return home was a Bachelor of Arts degree at Hampshire College, in which she found herself drawn to many forms of artistic expression, including dance, painting and photography. Having a marked interest in natural history as well, for her senior thesis she wrote about the human and natural history of her family's island in Lake George, NY; she also exhibited her photography in a gallery show at the college.

  After receiving her B.A. degree in 1978, Laura set off on her own with her camera to see the world. She traveled on a converted London double-decker “hippie bus” from Europe to Asia, passing through Iran just as the Shah was being overthrown, and through Afghanistan just weeks before the Soviet invasion. After visiting northern India she traveled on to Nepal, where she trekked 200 miles around the Annapurna massif with two Tibetan porters, and into a remote section of western Nepal that had seen only a handful of Western visitors.

  Returning back to the USA, she continued her photographic explorations of wild places, rafting the length of Alaska's Noatak River above the Arctic Circle, and apprenticing as a raft guide on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon during the flood year of 1983. While living in Santa Fe, NM, she worked in a photography studio and as an alpine ski instructor, before deciding to pursue graduate studies in wildlife conservation. She received a Master's degree in Wildlife Ecology from Yale University in 1986.

  While at Yale, Laura met her future husband, fellow wildlife biologist and adventurer, Rob Roy Ramey. Together they have worked on several wildlife research projects, ultimately finding elephant studies to be one of their primary focuses, investigating communication, social structure, and genetic relatedness.  “Studying elephants in Zimbabwe in 1990 was a pivotal experience,” Laura says.  “It ignited our enduring passion for the African continent and its magnificent wildlife.” Laura later wrote about their experiences in her book, Sengwa Journal: A Season with Elephants in the African Bush (available from the author).

  In 1991, Laura decided to pursue a doctoral degree in conservation biology, focusing her research on birds of the Neo-Tropics.  She collected DNA samples from birds throughout the rainforests of Costa Rica. The culmination of this research was a scientific publication outlining the effects of rainforest fragmentation on the genetic population structure of tropical birds. She was awarded a Ph.D. in conservation biology from Cornell University in 2000.

  Her photographs currently on exhibit at the Artists’ Niche were taken in Namibia over the past couple years while studying the genetic relations of desert elephants. They include portraits of individual elephants she has gotten to know through her research, as well as other icons of the African savanna such as zebra, giraffe, springbok, and lions. She and her husband will be returning to Namibia in the fall of 2008 to continue their research project.

  Laura and Rob have given many talks and lectures on their research projects, all illustrated with personal photographs and video footage. From their home in Nederland, they operate a wildlife consulting business, Wildlife Science International, Inc., that consults on endangered species issues.

   “My passion is wild animals and the wild places they inhabit,” says Laura. She strives to share that passion with the rest of the world through scientific research and photography. “I want to help bring about a greater understanding and appreciation for the earth’s wild creatures.”

  Check out Laura Brown’s photography at The Artists’ Niche Co-op Gallery, located on the traffic circle in Nederland.  For more information, or if you’re an artist interested in joining the co-op, email sharakay80466@yahoo.com.