Karen Glaser, whose underwater photography captured manatees, sharks and more , dies at 71

When photographer Karen Glaser was a kid, her hero was Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic swimmer turned actor who played Tarzan on the silver screen.

She swam every chance she got and was drawn to oceans and lakes her entire life.

Ms. Glaser, a longtime photography and dark room instructor at Columbia College Chicago, was living in Logan Square when she received an underwater camera in 1983 from her husband as a birthday gift.

She quickly began capturing images of kids frolicking and swimming at at Northwest Side YMCA and other local pools and water parks.

She learned to SCUBA dive and traveled to tropical destinations where she photographed sharks, turtles, stingrays and manatees.

Her work has appeared in exhibitions at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and the Portland Art Museum, to name a few, as well as galleries around Chicago. Her photos have also appeared in public art installations, magazines and in her 2003 book “Mysterious Manatees.”

Image of manatees captured by Karen Glaser

“We used to go photograph sharks in Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands,” said her husband, John Stranick. “She was fearless in the water. I was her dive buddy. I took care of the SCUBA gear, and she had three underwater cameras hanging off her.”

Crystal River, Fla., a well known location where manatees like to swim, was one of her favorite spots.

“It was her career, and we didn’t make much money, but we wrote things off and were able to get by and travel; she lived her life as an artist,” he said.

Ms. Glaser died Feb. 18 in Florida, where she’d lived since 2014, from complications from Parkinson’s disease. She was 71.

“She was just full of life and could put any hat on her head, and she looked good in it,” said her husband, adding that she loved vintage clothes.

Ms. Glaser drove a red Pontiac Firebird sports car and loved swimming with her husband and their dogs off Promontory Point on the South Side.

“It was like she never grew up, she was always kind of a kid. She sang songs to all our pets in made up words, so when I get sad, I think of that,” he said.

“I remember the day she told me she’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and she said, ‘I’ve decided I’m going to fight this with everything I have. What do you think?’ And I said ‘Of course! That’s exactly what we’re going to do.’ And she did that till the very end,” said her friend and former Logan Square neighbor Gretchen Henninger.

“She was pretty brave,” said her sister, Ellen DeBenedetti. “We both went to summer camp in Vermont, a Quaker-run wilderness camp that really advocated for women being independent and being out in nature.”

Ms. Glaser was born June 12, 1954, and grew up in Pittsburgh. Her father, Robert Glaser, was a well known educational psychologist. Her mother, Sylvia Glaser, was a political activist.

Ms. Glaser, who attended the Kansas City Art Institute and Indiana University, was also an adjunct instructor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois Chicago.

“She was very exacting and smart, and someone who took her own path,” said Martha Williams, a former student and friend who works as visual director of Atlanta Magazine. “She discovered her passion and found a place where she felt at home, where she could make her mark in her own little world.”

A memorial is scheduled for May 24 at noon at The Historic Thomas Center, Gainesville, Fla.

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