Marcus Stratton, Photographer
Marcus Stratton, Photographer
Ongoing and Select Past Works
Ongoing and Select Past Works
Landscapes
All images copyright Marcus Stratton, Lawrence, Kansas
Rooted in a childhood of open-ended exploration across the Topeka countryside, my lifelong passion for discovery eventually found its voice through photography. Inspired early on by Ansel Adams, I spent decades dreaming of Yosemite National Park before finally visiting in 2025, where I realized that whether capturing its high peaks or the rolling expanses of the Kansas Flint Hills—near my longtime home of Wamego—the true journey is an internal one. Through my lens, I strive to capture the natural world free of human interference, aiming both to highlight the importance of protecting the earth and to offer viewers a sacred space for their own moments of self-discovery and connection to existence.
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Past Projects
Cory
All images copyright Marcus Stratton, Lawrence, Kansas
Transitioning from the fast-paced world of daily newspaper photography to education, my life changed profoundly when I became a para-educator for Cory Garmon, a vibrant preteen left with the cognitive abilities of an infant following a devastating illness. Working daily with Cory for two years shifted my focus away from commercial ambitions, teaching me deep empathy and how to see the world through the eyes of someone entirely dependent on others. During our second year together—as his school routine evolved to better enrich his life and I pursued an independent photography study at Kansas State University—I received permission to document Cory's daily experiences both inside and outside of school. For a full year, I used my photojournalist background to create an intimate visual story that looked past his physical limitations to reveal his inherent worth, a deeply moving project that culminated in a Topeka Capital-Journal two page feature.
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Project Rescue Amazon Youth Orphanage
All images copyright Marcus Stratton, Lawrence, Kansas
During my time documenting the Project Rescue Amazon Youth (P.R.A.Y.) mission—an orphanage in Brazil founded in 1997 by Sally Savory, Maria Antonia Kientz, and the late Jenny Dieball with Wamego (Kansas) church support to aid children affected by local economic devastation—a profound personal connection struck me when I noticed an orphan girl's name hand-painted on my room's wall, mirroring my own daughter's name I had recently seen on her school chalkboard and underscoring a universal innocence across continents. Getting to know the resilient people of the orphanage helped me appreciate hardships far beyond my own, bringing to mind a guiding quote pulled from Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark: "There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once contained in some youthful body." Reflecting on this, I saw the orphanage as a true island of hope offering vulnerable children the safety and opportunity to reach their adult potentials.