• Lara Shipley

Slate's photo blog, Behold, celebrates the photography of Lara Shipley:

Lara Shipley became interested in doing a project in southern Arizona after moving to Phoenix in 2010. Shipley was raised in a small Midwestern town and sees this as the source of her interest in isolated and rural areas. Once she arrived in Arizona, Shipley began investigating the borderlands, spending time getting to know the various towns and their inhabitants and making as many as two trips a month from her home in Phoenix. She finds her subjects organically, meeting people during her visits.

Shipley’s stylistic approach is to use a blend of found and manipulated scenarios; some are staged, and others are shot as she finds them. This blending of actual, real-life documentary subjects with manipulated elements becomes interesting when applied to a region generally covered in a more straightforward documentary fashion.

Shipley's website is here.