lkmcreativesolutions/faces and places from around the world/biography

I grew up on the East Coast outside of Philadelphia in a small town in New Jersey. When I was 11, my family moved to Pakistan. That experience opened my eyes and mind to a new world and infinite possibilities. Back in the 80Õs during perestroika and glasnost, I chose to study Russian and International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and took my first trip to Russia in the summer of 1988. I have spent the past 16 years traveling to and living within various parts of Russia and other republics. I visited many republics, including the Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the Baltics while I was still a student.

My relationship with Russia has evolved since my carefree student days. I spent half of the 1990Õs living and working in Moscow, riding the wave of the new capitalism with the dynamic development from a communist state-centered society, to a lively free-market entrepreneurial haven. I had my fair share of developing brands and creating distribution and infrastructure for small organizations as well as worldwide brands, such as Remy Martin cognac, Finlandia Vodka, Tyson Chicken, Budweiser and Hershey Chocolate. While change has been painful, and for some even violent, for the most part, the Soviet Union collapsed remarkably peacefully. These countries continue to struggle to create new identities for themselves and to find their place in the world.

I left Moscow in 1997 and moved to California in 1998, where I explored public education for a few years. During my free time, I remained connected to Russia and have taken several consulting assignments overseas. Since August 2000, I have traveled to Siberia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as a consultant on short 2-3 week assignments where I conducted workshops in customer service, sales, marketing and market research, helped develop marketing departments and more recently, helped with grant proposal writing. My passion for photography and travel writing became more serious and I began to document everyday life on my trips.

This photo exhibit is the compilation of my later years of travel as a consultant for ACDI/VOCA, a nonprofit USAID funded organization in DC. Only since 2000, I began to take photos from the perspective of documenting the life and lives that I encounter in my travels, which leaves my earlier years void of photographic work. I have amassed over 2000 images, 80 of which can be seen at this exhibit.

If I had to give a theme to these photographs or a purpose to my work, it would be to capture a moment of everyday life in a place that many people may not even have heard about, and to help connect the viewer to the subject, weaving a universal story that shows our common humanity through humor and compassion. My fluency in Russian, adaptability and gregarious nature have certainly helped me in this process as I have always been able to strike up conversations quickly and easily with most people I have encountered.

I hope you enjoy your journey with me, both virtually and at any current showing, as we go off the beaten track, traveling thousands of miles away into the metropolis of Moscow, the hinterlands of Siberia, the plains of Azerbaijan, the deserts of Kazakhstan and the vineyards of Georgia. Her passion for photography and travel writing became much more serious as she began photographing everyday life in these places on her trips.

For more information, please contact me at (510)910-6406 or laura@lkmcreativesolutions.com.