Liz Achanta
Lauren Laufman is currently a graduate student studying astrophysics at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She got her undergraduate degree in astronomy and physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Her bucket list includes storm chasing, watching the aurora borealis, poking lava with a stick, seeing lightning from a reasonably close distance, observing from telescopes in Chile (or other similarly remote places where the night sky is as clear), feeling an earthquake, and chasing more solar eclipses!
In her free time, she enjoys astrophotography as well as photographing various weather phenomena, and you can use her domain LaurenLaufman.gay to view her photography portfolio online. Check out our #DotGayQAndA interview with Lauren to learn all about her journey as a photographer, scientist, and proud advocate for LGBTQIA+ communities.
Please tell us about your field of study!
It sounds cliche, but I've always thought space is really cool. So naturally, I became an astronomer. Now it's my actual job to stare at pictures of space all day and write code to analyze them. What more could I want?
How did you get into photography, and what are your favorite things to photograph?
It's a habit of mine to take photos of everything around me all the time, because I want to remember. (My memory isn't great).
At some point I realized my photos actually look pretty good, so I got a real camera and took a photography class to try and improve. I still take random pictures of everything just to remember, but now I also deliberately go out and set up a shot and edit photos to make them look prettier.
My favorite thing to photograph is lightning and thunderstorms. I love weather, and I love being in storms, and lightning is just so incredibly beautiful. It's very satisfying to capture it on camera. My dream is to go storm chasing and see tornados and take photos of them and the supercell storms that create them.
What made you decide to get your .gay domain, LaurenLaufman.gay?
The experience of going to a photographer's website, and then seeing that they're like you, is really cool. Representation matters.
I hope that queer people who are just getting into photography might stumble on my website, and know that they're not alone: there's a community to be a part of.
The other reason I got the .gay domain is because I think it's just really cool. I want people to know I'm gay and this is another way to shout it to the world. I'm here, I'm queer, and my photography is top tier!
Tell us about how you experience your intersecting identities as a lesbian and a scientist. Do you feel welcome and supported in the academic world of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)?
STEM/academia as a whole is not very welcoming to anyone who isn't a straight white cis male. It's hard when most physics professors are sexist old men who don't like change.
Luckily I've found a group of friends, and my current astronomy department is relatively welcoming, but it's not that way everywhere. It's really helped me that the other students in my program are actually diverse, even though the faculty isn't.
We've got to take what we can get and then work with that. STEM/academia probably isn't going to have any massive overhauls, so it's chipping away at it bit by bit. Someday, eventually, STEM/academia might improve, and I really hope that day is soon.
Why is it important to you to be proudly and visibly OUT?
I want other LGBTQIA+ people to know that they're not alone. It's definitely a goal of mine to be a beacon of queer to anyone around me, so that they know they're in a safe space and they can express themselves.
I realized I was a lesbian quite early on, but there was almost no one else in my life that identified as such, and it was rather isolating. I don't want anyone else to have to go through it alone.
Why is it important to help create a safer internet for LGBTQIA+ people?
The internet is often the first place someone might turn to upon realizing they're part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Everything feels uncertain in real life: you don't know who to trust or how safe it is to come out, so you turn to the internet to find a community of friends. Thus it's incredibly important that the internet can provide that safe space.
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