WLM
studio from Helen, renaming it Ludwig
Photo Enterprises. Lottie played an equal
and important role in the studio alongside
her husband. “My grandmother was a
progressive woman,” Brande says with a
smile. “She raced motorcycles, wore pants,
and even broke horses when she was a
kid.”
| history
his studio, the Loyers’ daughter, Anne
Brande, purchased the Laramie branch.
Today, Brande focuses her business,
Ludwig Photography, on capturing
emotional portraiture of the individuals she
not only counts as clients, but as friends.
Walter and Lottie Ludwig had one
daughter, Carol, who had a sense of
adventure like her mother and grandfather
before her. In the 1940s, the family acquired
a ranch on the Wyoming/Colorado
border, and Carol embraced a love of
ranching life and the West. She served as
Miss Laramie Jubilee Days 1961 and first
runner-up to Miss Rodeo Wyoming. She
was one of the first women to climb Devils
Tower, competed in slalom and was a ski
instructor at Winter Park, using folk singing
to finance her skiing obsession.
The legacy of Henning Svenson lives on
in the tens of thousands of priceless photos
created by him and his descendants. For
over 100 years, Anne Brande’s family has
documented the growth and transformation
of a frontier town in a romantic era. As she
flipped through a series of prints during
my interview, the flux between the Old
West and the modern era was glaringly
obvious. For example, one 1920s era photo
of Second Street in Downtown Laramie
showed a street full of Ford Model T’s and
similar vehicles, both parked and driving
– with a gentleman riding a horse right
alongside them on the street.
Carol married Bill Loyer, Ludwig
Photo Enterprises’s Kodak Eastman
representative at the time. The two
honeymooned through Europe for a month
before settling in New Jersey. However, the
love of Wyoming called them home, and the
two opened a studio branch in Cheyenne,
working alongside Carol’s parents in
the Laramie branch. The couple grew
the business into a regional hub for both
portrait photography and fil