BIOGRAPHY

By the age of six, Lorraine had traveled twelve times across the Atlantic Ocean with her British parents - the foundation for her nomadic life. As a teenager, Lorraine saw a dilemma. "How do you travel while tied down making a living?"

At 18 Lorraine flouted convention by buying a motorcycle to travel solo around California. Women didn't ride in 1978. A year later she was trekking across Europe. At 23, after completing a two year degree in photography, the road beckoned once again, and she traveled to West Africa to photograph people in their natural element. She realized she couldn't continue giving her belongings and cats to friends, and then attempt to reclaim her previous life upon re-entry. Potential employers saw her as a bad risk. There had to be another way. While pondering the situation, she completed a B.A. degree in Liberal Studies at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She paid her way by waitressing and bartending in seedy diners, chain restaurants and five star hotels. While late nights were spent serving vodka-tonics and steaks medium rare, daylight hours were used to photograph carnival workers, the homeless and pets for an animal organization.

In 1991, after a year of mentoring from Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Michael Williamson, she was hired as a photo editor and photographer for Egypt Today, an American owned magazine in Cairo, Egypt. Over the next two years she traveled on assignment to the Sudan, Morocco, Pakistan, Jordan and extensively around Egypt, photographing ex-presidents, open heart surgery, haute couture fashion and top Egyptian film directors and actors.

Chittock left the magazine and the following year returned to the Sudan with American writer Angela Stephens. Together they accompanied 200 camels and eight Sudanese men across the Libyan Desert on the Forty Days Road, an ancient caravan route. The trek resulted in Shadows in the Sand. There is now a lavish second edition, which includes notes on the duo's incarceration.

Upon returning to Cairo, Chittock became an urban wild-life tracker, photographing the felines roaming the streets as they have for thousands of years. The subsequent picture book Cairo Cats juxtaposed Chittock's intimate images with words from Arabian and Ancient Egyptian literature and folklore.

In 1998 Lorraine married and moved to Kenya. Living in a suburb of Nairobi merely a mile from where Out of Africa was filmed, Chittock suffered the same isolation and warnings Isak Dinesen endured a century earlier. Lorraine is lured outdoors by 'DOG', a flea infested mutt who arrives on the doorstep. Realizing if she waits for her husband she won't go anywhere, she packs DOG into a 1983 Land Rover for their first adventure - Tanzania. Over the course of four years the pack of two encounter spitting cobras, drunken judges and big cats. But it's while visiting nomadic tribes Lorraine ultimately decides, 'If I can't travel there with my dogs, the place isn't worth exploring.'

In 2003 after twelve years of living overseas, Lorraine returned to America with her two canine companions and she began writing On a Mission from Dog. In 2006 the Pack headed south until reaching Costa Rica where they lived in a fishing village for a year, before continuing on a four year journey to learn about the relationship Latin Americans have with their dogs. This pictorial research became the foundation for Los MUTTS - Latin American Dogs.

On route, she met other travelers with canine companions, and kept her ears open for others around the globe. Lorraine compiled their stories and advice and produced Dogs Without Borders - Tales and Tips from the Road. The pack of three have established a base in Chile, in a cabin overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

During her travels she's discovered why so many retirees take to the open road. "Nomadism," says Lorraine,"isn't an escape from society, but a return to natural rhythms deeply embedded in us." Lorraine's teenage dreams came true. Her livelihood doesn't depend on working in one location. Some people travel to find themselves. Others to escape. For Lorraine, it is the rhythm of life itself.

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