Connections & Reflections: Reception & Gallery Talk with Alice Laurenson

Join us in the gallery for a reception and talk with photographer Alice Laurenson whose exhibition “Connections & Reflections” is on view at the Carriage Barn Arts Center January 8-18, 2025. 

Laurenson’s images of children and adults in daily life in Asia, Africa, and South America offers a stunning display of the universal bonds that connect us all. “I’ve always loved photography and believed in its power to influence, inspire, and  motivate, as well as delight and entertain. Now, I’m using my own images to focus attention on our common humanity,” says Alice. 

Photographer Alice Laurenson

The exhibit’s 20 large color images represent people she’s encountered during the last 20 years of her career as a tour manager with an educational tours travel organization focused on archaeology, history, and culture. “I’ve always been interested in people’s faces—I look for interesting faces—and I’ve been  lucky that these people allowed me to put them in focus,” says Alice. Even if she didn’t  know their language, a bit of pantomime to request their permission would usually be  enough to allow Alice to capture the shot. 

“Early on, I learned that we don’t need to speak the same language to communicate and connect,” she says. “That’s what I came away with very early on, that we are all one. It’s so very important for  us to always remember that, especially now,” says Alice. 

Through her lens, Alice shares her view of the beauty found in people while working,  playing, and otherwise living their lives. She freezes in time extraordinary moments in the  ordinary: a woman in Kashgar in Xinjiang, China tending to buckets of sudsy laundry on  the sidewalk; a woman cooking with calabash bowls in her earthen-walled kitchen in Mali, West Africa; a man in the same village painstakingly deconstructing a woven plastic  feedbag and braiding the strands into strong, heavy rope.