Central Virginia Community College
CVCCs November Gallery Features Melinda Wheeler
Lynchburg, VA /Media Release/ -- Photographs by Melinda Wheeler are on display throughout the Month of November in Merritt Hall at CVCCs Lynchburg Campus on Wards Road. The artist will present her works in person at a reception in her honor, Friday, November 10, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM at the exhibit site. The reception is open to the public, casual attire and free of charge. Refreshments will be served.
Wheeler features photographic works from her trips to Mexico in 2003 and 2004. On the first visit, she did shoots in and around Oaxaca City including inside the villages of the Zapotec and Mixtec Indians on Mexicos Southeast Coast. The next year she branched out from Mexico City into the colonial heartland. She photographed her way through San Miguel de Allende, Dolores Hidalgo, Patzcuaro, and the small island of Janitzio, home of the Tarascan Indians.
What Wheeler captured from these two journeys is a rare photographic essay on Mexicos indigenous population. Both color and black-and-white images portray a people and lifestyle that seems to have changed little in the past century.
Wheelers interest in photography came in the 1950s during her first trip to Mexico at eight years of age. Equipped with a Kodak Brownie camera, her subjects were quite different from those a few years back. [It was] a place filled with grotesque beggars and ancient landscapes, where fear and pleasure were never far apart, she said. It was enough of an impression for her to continue her pursuit of photography as she went on to study photographic art at Columbia College in Chicago.
There is little doubt that her work is both artistic and culturally relevant. But it is her passion that is most evident in each of these photos. I prefer the Mexico of old - that which existed even before my childhood memories; the one that still exists in the minds of those who were there; the one that I have attempted to capture in these images.
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Release Date: 4:00 PM (EDT) 11/03/06
Release Number: 061103.wheelerexhibit
Media Contact:
Kennan J. Meyer
Coordinator, Public Relations and Marketing
Central Virginia Community College
(434) 832-7609
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A Member Institution of the Virginia Community College System.
