Melanie Willhide’s Tribute to a Burglar

When life give you lemons, make lemonade. When someone breaks into your home and steals your computer, make a collaborative photo project. That’s what Melanie Willhide did.

Willhide dedicates “To Adrian Rodriguez, with Love” to the individual who broke into her home and stole various things. Her computer was recovered by the police, but the hard drive had been wiped clean. Willhide attempted to recover the erased data but found her digital photographs corrupted. Lemons! Rather than delete the images, Willhide considered these corrupted files a collaboration with her machine. She refined them and made additional ones inspired by the mess. Lemonade!

The series opens today at Von Lintel Gallery, in New York. Here’s a look.

Photographs courtesy the artist and Von Lintel Gallery.