Leslie Williamson was born and raised in San Jose, California and educated at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Since graduating she has pursued both fine art and commercial photography, which have garnered her numerous accolades including being a Surface Magazine “Avant Guardian” and featured in Communication Arts magazine.
Photography is Leslie’s way of figuring out the world around her. She loves shooting people and places, on film and digital, at home or abroad, editorial, fine art and advertising. One of her personal projects for the past five years was released in fall 2010 as her first book, “Handcrafted Modern” (Rizzoli). Derived from her passion for art and design she set out to “meet” her design heroes through photographing their homes. This labor of love has set her on a new path to continue uncovering more artisans of all kinds, world famous and little known alike. In her spare time she travels the world photographing the homes and portraits of people she admires and whose homes and workshops inspire her. At the moment she is concentrating on the American Craftsman. In addition to continuing her commercial work, and her American Craftsman project, she has another book in the planning stages and a speaking tour to accompany the release of Handcrafted Modern.
She currently resides on a foggy hill in San Francisco.
- American Craft Magazine
- American Express Custom Publishing
- Atlantic Broadband Cable Company
- the Barbarian Group
- CNN
- David Armario Design
- Design Within Reach
- Dwell Magazine
- Erica Tanov
- Farm Architects
- Farrar Strauss, and Giroux
- Heath Ceramics
- IBM
- Intersection Magazine
- Janezic Collection
- J.B. Blunk Residency
- Lucky Magazine
- Lunar
- Meta Design
- Paper Plane Studio
- Public Bikes
- Readymade Magazine
- Rizzoli Publishers
- Random House
- San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
- Seed Magazine
- Stanford Medicine Magazine
- Starbucks
- Stone Yamashita Partners
- Surface Magazine
- Travel + Leisure
- Volume Inc.
- William Stout Architectural Books
- W.W. Norton