Laura Russell is a Tucson-based photographer and book artist who creates hand-bound, limited-edition artist books that incorporate her own photographs and usually her own texts. In the tradition of American vernacular photography, Russell is constantly capturing the world around her with her camera. Often she focuses on the things that go unseen, whether chairs left by the side of the road or the ubiquitous American flag in popular decorations. Russell captures the American experience from her perspective. She has moved and traveled throughout her life and her imagery is drawn from daily experiences across the US and over the years. She will start to notice patterns and preoccupations among her photographs, and then builds a book to tell larger, compelling and engaging narratives. Her books frequently have a community-based practice, in her sensitive engagement and depiction of individuals in the communities. You can see this in her book sharing the creative signs made and used by the homeless at busy intersections or, in stark contrast, the rising popularity of deer hunting among women. Russell experiments with formats and folds, matching them to the experience of the images and content, like the postcard books in Allegiance or the complicated structure mimicking rifle sites through trees found in Magnificent Beast

Websites: LauraRussell.com