Background
Wilson was born Laura Cunningham and raised in Massachusetts, the daughter of Rosemary (née White) and Edward J. Cunningham.
Wilson was born Laura Cunningham and raised in Massachusetts, the daughter of Rosemary (née White) and Edward J. Cunningham.
She has completed four books of photography and text.
Her photographs have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Wallpaper, Washington Post Magazine, and London"s Sunday Times Magazine. Watt Matthews of Lambshead (1989) is a photographic essay about one of the last Texas cattlemen. Avedon at Work: In the American West (2003) is a portrait of photographer Richard Avedon (for whom Wilson worked as an assistant) showing his creative process, working methods, and range of subjects as he worked to complete In the American West.
Grit and Glory: Six-Manitoba Football (2003) documents six-man football and its culture in small Texas towns.
Wilson has lectured on photography at Harvard University, the International Center of Photography in New York City, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the University of Texas at Austin. She serves on the boards of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas Libraries.
Wilson is married to Robert A. Wilson. In September 2005, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas mounted an exhibition of Wilson"s photographs from Avedon at Work.
Photographs from the book Grit & Glory were exhibited in the Meadows Museum of Southern Methodist University in 2011.
That Day: Laura Wilson was presented at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art from September 5, 2015 – February 14, 2016.
She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. She is also a member of the advisory councils of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts and the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.