Martha A. Strawn is Professor of Art Emerita at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte and a photographer based in North Carolina and Florida who is recognized worldwide for combining aesthetic and scientific inquiries into the study of place that she calls visual ecology. She co-founded The Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film in Charlotte, and she has served on numerous boards throughout her career, including Friends of Photography and the Center for the Study of Place. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to India and also a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in photography. Her work is exhibited internationally in both art and science museums, among them the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Smithsonian Institution, Science Museum of Minnesota, San Diego Museum of Natural History, Princeton Art Museum, National Geographic Society Museum, Museum of Florida Artists, Mint Museum of Art, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, and Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Her books include Alligators, Prehistoric Presence in the American Landscape (1997) and, with Yi-Fu Tuan, Religion: From Place to Placelessness (2009).
