Sleeping Beauties
(the box under the bed)

Melanie Willhide's photographs meditate on memory and recall how even anonymous histories can re-emerge as recognizable, even familiar. Specifically, Sleeping Beauties (the box under the bed) explores the authority of the photograph to protect and disclose fragments of personal memories of love over the course of a lifetime. The group of photographs show both men and women in the shared identity of lover.

The images look like artifacts (annotations of time and the written word are included) but in fact are artificial; crafted to look like the aged and sensuous photographs made between lovers. Their anonymity ranges from totally unstipulated to partially explicated. As a group, the images testify to the way we look to the photograph to capture the essential moments of our romantic lives. The photographic image becomes a memorial to a lifetime of loves, ruptured through breakups or cut short by death.