Photography began for La Mar when someone said, "don't take a picture of that." Don't take that the wrong way - he's not some stupid paparazzi. He digs with a camera. At least that's one version of the beginning regardless of his own recounting of the tale. Images for La Mar are a sort of braille for him to experience the world - to frame encounters. Sometimes I'm not so sure he is good at doing it without a camera, but maybe that savant-take is what makes the pictures so engaging. It is clear that since day-one his photographic interests have always been in subcultures, corners and the odds and ends of existence.

La Mar decided to pursue his interest in photography through study at the San Francisco Art Institute, after fleeing film school at the University of Southern California. However, he found himself swiftly pulled away from the program at SFAI. He was leaving school at every opportunity to embark on far-flung journalistic endeavors framed with a flux idea of intent and a camera. His writing soon became the sole factual record of every location he reached with his photographs stringing together twisting narratives that were never written. Articles piled into the dozens during this period of a few years and were written in locales including Thailand, China, Vietnam, Japan and Cambodia. This took him to remote mafia-run casino towns and the trail of the Khmer-Thai drug trade; he learned to speak fluent Thai and had it all crash around him when he contracted typhoid fever in the Shan State of Burma at 22 years of age.

Photographs subtracted from the literal task of writing through these years were published in a variety of media including The Economist, The Nation, Bangkok Post and Tokion. His life was strange, and was a bit like a character out of a Graham Greene novel. Take away the list of adventures though and he was still the same bold, impetuous photographer. Surprisingly, all the pitfalls did not deter him, rather they seem to embolden him as he continued.

La Mar received his BFA in Photography in 2002 from SFAI. He continued his education at Yale University and received his MFA in Photography in 2005. He has subsequently exhibited work in New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Bangkok and the United Kingdom.

La Mar has produced commercial work for magazines and certain private institutions, such as non-governmental organization and child advocacy group PLAN International; he has also done work for charities including development programs based out of Johns Hopkins University.