Laura Praeger (née Blundell) was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and was about twelve years old when her father brought his family to Australia, settling in Queensland. She married Francis Pasqual Praeger in Brisbane in 1880 but the marriage ended after several years. Laura then relocated to Sydney where she began working as a photographer, working in partnership with a photographer named Chubb between 1889 and 1891 before establishing her own studio on George Street. She worked out of studio on William Street between 1893 and 1894 and photographed many leading members of Sydney society. Praeger exhibited work in the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. She remarried in 1894 and thereafter seems to have closed her studio and returned to England, where her second husband, George Brighton Harland, died in 1900. The State Library of New South Wales holds a number of examples of her work, including her studio portrait of Mary Windeyer.
