I was born and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. The arts have been central to my life since childhood, beginning with the stories of the Brothers Grimm and other classic fairy and folk tales. When I was sixteen, I began writing, studying, and publishing poetry.
During and after my undergraduate years at the University of Michigan (where I was named the Alfred P. Sloan Scholar for the Humanities), I published poems in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Quarterly and Parabola. In the beginning of 2003, though, for partly-mysterious reasons, my poetry-writing metamorphosed into photography as my main artistic practice. My experiences with poetry became one of the major sources for the kind of photographs that I aimed to create
Since that beginning in my new art 20 years ago, my images have won multiple honors in global photography competitions such as the International Photography Awards, the International COLOR (Photography) Awards, the reFocus Color Photography Awards, the Analog Sparks International Film Photography Awards, and the Fine Art Photography Awards. Photographs of mine have also been selected for juried exhibitions administered by venues in every region of the U.S., including the Center for Photographic Art (CA), the Center for Fine Art Photography (CO), the New Britain Museum of American Art (CT), the Atlanta Photography Group Gallery (GA), and PhotoPlace Gallery (VT).
Creating images (in photography as I once did in poetry) is the deepest, most essential part of my work in art, and they are better without any attempted description or bogus “explanation.” But for anyone who wants to know more about my experiences, perceptions, opinions & beliefs, this site contains my Blog (“LAWRENCE RUSS Photography: Soul, Art, and Society”).
And in case you want to read more about my work in and for the arts beyond just photography, I’ve provided an “Intro for Viewers and Readers,” a page called “About My Literary Work,” and another called “About My Legal Work for the Arts.”