Rhonda Lashley Lopez
Rhonda's work has been shown in her book, "Don't Make Me Go to Town: Ranch Women of the Texas Hill Country," as well as in Photography 414 in Texas.
From her native Louisiana to the American West, From Nepal to Peru to Portugal and points in between, Rhonda Lashley Lopez has been an observer, recording her vision of nature and manmade landscapes and often focusing on the small or hidden details. Rhonda earned her MA in journalism/photojournalism from the University of Texas in Austin and worked as a photographer, writer and editor for newspapers, magazines and other entities. At UT, Rhonda studied with J.B. Colson, Maggie Steber and photo historian Larry Schaaf, and she went on to teach at Schreiner University and Austin Community College.
Rhonda traveled to New York in 2009 to learn platinum/palladium printing on traditional papers as well as on vellum over gold leaf from Dan Burkholder. While studying photo history, she learned to love the luminous look of platinum and platinum/palladium photographs. The process was patented in 1873, and some of Rhonda’s favorite photographers printed in platinum: Edward S. Curtis, Alfred Stieglitz, Imogen Cunningham, Laura Gilpin.
She fell in love with the process, which involves making negatives, mixing the platinum and palladium with other chemicals in the darkroom, brushing them on the paper, then exposing the paper and negative under a UV light and then "developing" and clearing the paper in various baths. After the prints dry, the gold leaf is applied to the back so that the gold shimmers through the light parts of the photograph. Every print is handmade, unique, and truly a labor of love.
Rhonda currently prints images she shot with both film and digital cameras, edits all the images in Photoshop, and then prints the large negatives for contact printing. Rhonda enjoys combining images with words so much that she writes about every photograph she makes.
Artist's Statement
"I currently shoot with Nikon D3s, an Olympus OM-D E-M1 and an iPhone. I have never felt photography is about the equipment, but about the heart and mind of the photographer and a willingness to slow down and really look at the world."
