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Melanie Willhide (born 1975 in Manchester, Connecticut) is an American conceptual photographer based in Los Angeles, California. Her work explores the heartbreak of perception and memory, love and loss, identity and representation, the temporal distance between seeing and knowing, and the willingness to emotionally succumb to the illusion of a photograph.

She is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Pasadena City College. She has lectured at many colleges including UCLA and USC (both in Los Angeles, California), California College of the Arts (San Francisco, California), Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), and The School of Visual Arts (New York, New York).

Early life and Education
Melanie Willhide was born in Manchester, Connecticut in 1975. She received her MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2002 and holds a BFA and Certificate in Art History both received from Rhode Island School of Design in 1999.

Work
For nearly two decades, Melanie Willhide has challenged the conceived limits of the photographic medium by merging analog and digital formats to make photographs that look like no other. Her work is said to be “rooted in the discourse of photography; it’s concerns with memory, authenticity and narrative.” Willhide claims that photographs can be absurd proxies for the real thing. Raised with the influence of two family painters her work “recalls painting techniques.” Her approach to her practice is said to boundaryless. In Sleeping Beauties (the box under the bed) she created artificial artifacts that play with the idea of photographic authenticity. In to Adrian Rodrigues with love she treated “pixels like paint to emulate the choreography of a corrupted file.” In Henbane for Honey Bun she produced hallucinatory digital collages to conjure a history of envisaging women. Most recently in The Disquieting Muses Again she employs a cheap scanner to photograph the walls and beams of a converted ribbon mill in Central Connecticut. Each project is it’s own painterly exploration of the psychological and symbolic.

Education
2002	MFA from Yale University School of Art 1999	BFA from Rhode Island School of Design

Exhibitions
Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States for over two decades. Willhide’s work is included in a number of museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Eastman Museum and the Museum of Art & History. In addition her works are held in private collections within the United States, England, and France.

Publications
Her work has been reviewed and featured in a variety of notable publications including The New York Times, Artforum, The Los Angeles Times, Blind Spot, Art in America, and Modern Painters. She has also been featured in Cool Hunting, Saint Lucy, AfterImage, and Slate.