The exhibit, titled "A Place Away: Photographic Works by Martina Lopez," will run March 4 through 29 at the Eleanor R. and Robert A. DeVries Gallery in KCC's Davidson Visual and Performing Arts Center, on campus at 450 North Ave. The exhibit is free and open to the public for viewing during regular business hours, which are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.

An opening reception for the exhibit, which is also free and open to the public, will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, March 14, in the gallery. Lopez will speak to KCC students prior to the reception as part of the College's DeVries Visiting Artist Lecture Series from 3 to 4 p.m. March 14 in the auditorium of the Davidson Center.

Lopez said her images (some of which are pictured here) are based on found portraits that are digitally manipulated.

"By extracting people from their original context, I hope to retell a story of their being," Lopez said. "While the found photograph verifies an actual lived experience, it is my hope that my images acquire a life of their own."

Lopez has been working artistically with the figure in the landscape with the use of digital media since 1985. In her artist's statement for the KCC exhibit, she says her interest in the electronic environment "lies in the believability of the photograph and malleability of the digital medium," and the way she makes her images changes with each technological shift.

"I am fascinated by our relationship to the earth, our effect on it and its emotional influence on us," she says. "All of which make our existence evident as I continue to ponder the day when we may only exist in a photograph."

Lopez received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Washington and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her artwork has been featured in many textbooks and publications, including Naomi Rosenblum's "A World History of Photography"; "The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Electronic Age," by Sylvia Wolf; and "100 Ideas That Changed Photography," by Mary Warner Marien, which discusses the most influential ideas in photography's history from the daguerreotype to current technologies.

Lopez has exhibited widely and received many grants, including a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Photography Fellowship. Her work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; and the Center for Creative Photography at The University of Arizona in Tucson. Lopez has taught photography at the University of Notre Dame since 1993.

For more information about the exhibit, contact KCC Photography and Multimedia Program Coordinator Ryan Flathau at 269-965-3931 ext. 2559 or flathaur@kellogg.edu.