Background
Laurence Le Guay was born in 1917 in Sydney, Australia.
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Laurence Le Guay was born in 1917 in Sydney, Australia.
Le Guay began photographing in 1935 as an assistant in Dayne Portrait Studios. From 1936 he began exhibiting in local and overseas salons, opening his own studio in Martin Place in 1938. During World War II Le Guay served in the RAAF as a war photographer and spent a brief time in London documenting plastic surgery for burn victims. He returned to Sydney and established a new studio in 1946. Soon he was involved with running a photography school, then he founded the magazine Contemporary Photography, the first Australian journal not published by a photo-supply firm.
In 1947 Le Guay went into partnership with John Nisbett; although their studio specialized in fashion and commercial illustration, Le Guay also took assignments for the Geographical Society in northern and central Australia. In 1948 he served as photographer for the first postwar Australian Antarctica expedition, sponsored by the Department of Information. He and Nisbett closed their studio in 1972, but Le Guay continued his own photography and also did the editing. He spent much of 1974 sailing around the world in a yacht, recording the trip for a book. Le Guay made a film on the Sydney Harbour Bridge ca. 1948.