Lawrence Ivy '72

Lawrence Ivy ’72 is a photographer with a long and varied career. As a student at the University of Texas at Austin, Lawrence always enjoyed photography, taking snapshots and documenting travel. Russell Lee, a legend on campus, invited Lawrence to audit a seminar. The classes were filled with art majors, but soon he was blending in and using the darkroom for printmaking. His next mentor on campus, Gary Winogrand, a seasoned professional from Sports Illustrated, encouraged Lawrence to take graduate classes in the College of Fine Arts. An English major in the College of Humanities, Lawrence was part of an early interdisciplinary education.

He stayed in Austin, working and learning how photographs are documents of time. By the time Lawrence left Austin, he was managing the art department lab and was employed by the art history department as a full-time photographer, documenting exhibits and helping to create the slide library. He carried a camera and photographed almost constantly for the next 30 years. When he felt the time was right, Lawrence left Austin with a huge portfolio of documentary work of Texas life and moved to New York City, the epicenter of the photography world. He began to freelance, working on fine art, editorial, and advertising projects. Through the years his editorial and commercial work has appeared worldwide in publications such as Newsweek, New York Magazine, Bauer Publications, and The New York Times. Other freelance clients included the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation, London/PolyGram Records, Asian Food and Lifestyle Magazine, and NYC Health and Hospitals Corp. Lawrence also worked with PBS public television WNET/Thirteen, photographing ”The Charlie Rose Show” and many TV documentaries hosted by Bill Moyers and Walter Cronkite.

In 1997, Lawrence worked in China photographing temple inscriptions in the mountains of Huangshan for a book on Taoist prayer. He started to exhibit his own photographs and concentrated on publishing his own books. He works in Tokyo, hometown of his wife, Rieko, as much as their New York life will allow. An exhibition of Lawrence’s early work from the East Village in Manhattan was shown in September 2000 at the Westwood Gallery in Soho. In 2005, the Westwood Gallery also exhibited his Tokyo photographs documenting the demise of bluefin tuna—“Maguro wa Mohaya.”