Back in the ’60s, Carolyn Brown made a move that would change her life. She left the snow-capped mountains of Colorado to live in the desert climate of . And she was captivated with what she found there.

“To see these ancient places, 4,000 years old or older, it was just flabbergasting,” she says.

Her fascination with the area’s ancient buildings led her to study Islamic art and architecture at the American University in Cairo .

It also led her to buy a camera.

Brown began photographing the ancient architecture she found so fascinating, until what started as a hobby became a lifelong passion and a highly successful career.

Though she ended her stay in after a few years and moved to Dallas, Brown has returned nearly every year since to capture the sights and culture of the Middle East on film. She also spent 10 years traveling throughout Mexico and Guatemala, shooting what would eventually make up “Sacred Space — Man and the Divine in Mexico, Guatemala and Southwest United States,” a mural exhibit of some 200 photos.

Brown has become so well known for her photography that many of her trips were made at the invitation of various governments: , , and others.

In fact, she traveled to in 1990, two months before Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded . She sensed, she says, that there “was something going on [politically] around that time.

“I remember sitting down for breakfast with another American at my hotel, and he made some remark that something was going on, something rather tense,” she says.

She never did figure out if the tension had anything to do with the eventual invasion, but said the mood didn’t change her interaction with the Iraqi people, who she says are very friendly. The same is true of most Middle Easterners, she says.

“I would go to the little villages, and they’d invite me in for tea, whatever they had. The people are very warm and open and giving and generous.”

In fact, Brown says, she believes that Americans and Middle Easterners have more in common than most people think.

“I think that oftentimes, Americans are more like the people in the Middle East than many of the other visitors to their country,” she says. “Most Middle Eastern people are very open and have a good sense of humor. They’re funny — they like to joke and play with words. They’re just lovely people.”

It’s one of the reasons that, despite the fact she has made near-yearly trips to the region for much of her life, she won’t be going back anytime soon. She was in Yemen photographing an archaeological site in March, but says during that trip she “felt different,” though she’s quick to add that locals treated her as well as ever. 

In the meantime, she continues to work on her third book of Dallas, titled “Dallas: Where Dreams Come True.” It will feature roughly 180 photos of the city, including architecture in the arts district, downtown area, Fair Park and churches and schools. It will also include writings by local notables such as Ray Nasher and Laura Miller.

“There are so many new, wonderful things [to photograph],” she says.

And she’s already shooting for her next project, an exhibit on the architecture of Mark Lemmon, creator of churches and school buildings throughout Dallas, including Highland Park United Methodist Church, the Hall of State at Fair Park and 18 buildings at SMU.

            Titled “Crafting Traditions: The Architecture of Mark Lemmon,” the exhibit will be held at SMU’s Meadows Museum and will include Brown’s photos as well as the work of other artists. Dr. Edmund Pillsbury, director of the museum, had this to say of Brown’s work: “She’s clearly one of the most outstanding photographers in this area concentrating on archaeological and architectural photography. She’s got a real eye; she’s very particular, very patient, really a remarkable, gifted artist.”

            On her propensity for photographing buildings rather than people, Brown says: “They aren’t just walls,” she says. “They’re a reflection of the civilization and the people who live there and who built them. It’s all those cultures I’m interested in — their stories, their history.

“This is a way to record it, to document it in a beautiful way. I hope it to be beautiful, anyway.”