Thursday, September 24, 2009
Topeka-based artist and educator Marydorsey Wanless was about to turn 60 (a big number, she admits), and it prompted her to look at old photographs of her grandparents. She was kind of shocked at when she came across a picture of her then-60-year-old grandmother. "She was old," she recalls. "We look so much different now, and I thought, I don't feel old. I don't look like that." Wanless decided to take a look at her own aging process, and in turn, our society's fear of growing old, with her photography exhibit "Evidence of Aging." She's reached a level of contentment by documenting her own signs of aging, with photographs showcasing her backaches (pictured), the legs that have provided her six decades worth of transportation and the wrinkles marking her countenance. Even the development process, taking digital negatives and transferring them to the hands-on, Civil War-era tintype method, gives her photographs and their subject matter more resonance. "It reflects the concept of aging ... They will also decay a little bit and deteriorate," Wanless says. "Evidence of Aging" is on display at the Walter Yost Art Gallery at Highland Community College in Highland, Kan., through Oct. 15.

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