LAURA STRAUS turned to photography after a career in photo editing.  Potent early influences included her tunure at the legendary Magnum Photos (1989-93), where daily interaction with images of photographers such as Joseph Koudelka, Eugene Richards, Sebastiao Salgado, Elliott Erwitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Susan Meiselas helped frame her understanding of the medium.

Her most recent books include A Child’s World, published by Hearst Publications (2000), as well as What Fathers Are (2002), What Love Is (2001), What Mothers Are (2001), What Girlfriends Do (1999) Girls, Girls, Girls (2001), The Bride's Book of Weddings (1999), Fathers & Daughters (2001), For Dad with Love (2002) and Classic Cocktails (1999), all published by Andrews & McMeel. Her images have also appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Elle, Parenting, People, and Parent and Child. In 2002, she served as the still photographer for Michael Apted’s documentary project, Married in America, an A&E/New Line TV production. Selected works from this series were published in The New York Times and later won entrance into the 2003 Photo Review juried by Bill Hunt, Director of Photography at New York's Ricco/Maresca Gallery.

Laura is currently working on a long-term project on the American family. Selected works from this project resulted in her winning the 2002 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography. Other awards and exhibitions include first place in Camera Club of New York's 2004 National Photography Competition juried by Ralph Gibson who says of her work, “Laura Straus had taken an idea and performed variations upon it with considerable variety and camera handling virtuosity…. Usually photographers repeat their victories and conceal their weaknesses, in this case her series showed conceptual advances from image to image”. The award included a solo exhibition, which opened in New York City on September of 2004. Laura was also included in Ceres Gallery’s annual juried exhibition (June, 2004) curated by the Museum of Modern Art’s Fereshteh Daftari, who says, “Straus explores the beauty of luminescence of the commonplace”.

Laura has exhibited her work at the Amsterdam Whitney Chelsea Gallery (August, 2004), The Photo Center Northwest, WA (July, 2004), Photo District Gallery (April, 2004), The Texas Photographic Society 2004 exhibition, Upstream Gallery (January, 2004), the Buddy Holly Center (2002), The Art Association of Oswego (2002), and won the Brush Art Gallery Photo2000 award (2000) for excellence in black and white photography. Her work is included in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s, Jai Rodriguez’s collection, which was seen on Extra! during the month of July, 2004. Her work is currently exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts ,Florida in a group exhibition in 2006 on the subject of Family curated by Vicki Thompson Wilder.