Prints and manuscript materials are unrestricted, all transparent media is restricted. Please contact repository for more information.
Laura L. Camden Photographic Archive, 1998-2006, The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
Laura Camden is a professor of photography
at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. She received her master's
degree in photojournalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999, where
she also served as an adjunct professor. Her master's thesis on the Mennonite
community in Seminole, Texas, "Mennnonites in Texas: The Quiet in the Land"
became the basis for a book,
Prior to taking up her current professorship, Camden taught at the University of Texas and the University of Montana at Missoula. She also worked as a picture editor and contract photographer for Reuters and had her own business, Laura Camden Photographers, Inc., an award-winning commercial and editorial photography company. Her work has been exhibited at the University of Texas, the University of Texas at San Antonio, the Stephen L. Clarke Gallery, Austin, Texas. She is a member of the Society for Photographic Education, the Texas Photographic Society, the National Press Photographers Association and Women in Communication, Inc.
Collection includes negatives, transparencies, contact sheets, black and white prints, jpegs, and notes related to the Mennonite community in Seminole, Texas. Camden chose this community as the subject of her master's thesis in the photojournalism department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her photographs document everyday life and worship in a West Texas Mennonite farming community, which consists of more than 3,000 people and includes five separate congregations. Camden visited with and photographed these people and their way of life from 1998 to 1999. A copy of Camden's thesis is also included, as are various materials related to the book that she and Susan Gaetz Duarte created out of their master's theses work in two very different Mennonite communities in contemporary Texas.
Donated by Laura L. Camden.