Life as she knows it

Mark Armstrong

Nov. 6, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- FREDERICKSBURG -- Rhonda Lashley Lopez has a story to tell.

This weekend a gallery showing will open in Fredericksburg featuring a 15-year project consisting of Lopez's photos and interviews of eight Hill Country women who own, operate and live on area ranches.

"This is a passing thing. Ranching as these women were doing at the time is fading from the landscape forever," Lopez said.

But this isn't Lopez's story. Her story begins 15 years ago when she was a 33-year-old special education teacher with a 2-year-old daughter who decided she needed to do something different with her life.

"I got out a graduate catalog and just started flipping through the pages. I got to the photo journalism page, and it was like lightning hit me. This is what I want to do," Lopez said.

For years, she commuted to graduate school in Austin, where what started as a final project for a photojournalism class sowed the seeds of decade-long interest in women on ranches.

The project began with three women. Lopez interviewed and photographed these women with her daughter in tow.The women came from ranches including ones near Junction, Rocksprings, Blanco and Comfort.

But, Lopez said she wasn't interested in "weekend ranchers." She wanted women who lived and worked on ranches and made their livelihood off the land.

"I've always loved stories about strong people and women who do things that might traditionally be men's jobs," she said.

Her black-and-white photos and stories about the women she calls "Ranchwomen" was a hit with Lopez's professors in Austin, who recommended the project be sent to the University of Texas Press to be considered for publication. Editors there told her to go out and get more ranchwomen to fill out a full book, which Lopez turned into her final thesis.

And for a while, that's where her story ended. Her project -- pictures and stories of a dozen ranchwomen -- never made it into a book or outside the university.

"At that point I faltered. I'm not sure why," Lopez said. "The thought of my work being out there for the whole world to see is scary. It's very personal."

For the next several years, Lopez worked, lived and raised her daughter. For a time she worked for The Kerrville Daily Times and eventually ended up in Fredericksburg, where six years ago her life changed.

Lopez was diagnosed with cancer. She underwent months of chemotherapy under her doctor's supervision, and after she was cleared of the disease, she began rethinking her life.

"I think after I had cancer I thought life is too short," she said.

Lopez said she remembered the project put on hold years before and "sheepishly" called the editors at the University of Texas Press. To her surprise, the editors remembered her and said they still were interested in the project.

Lopez went back to work. She contacted eight women she had previously interviewed and updated their stories.

But, life got in the way again.

"I still didn't do it," Lopez said. "I got really busy with life."

Lopez and her daughter moved to Austin two years ago, but just like six years earlier when cancer shook her life up, another traumatic event refocused her -- Lopez's only child graduated and left home for college.

"My whole life was leaving me, and I thought I've got to get busy with something," she said.

That first something was marriage. After her cancer was gone, Lopez, who continued her interest in photography, started visiting an art gallery in Fredericksburg owned by her doctor.

The two became friends and wed earlier this year.

Dr. Jose Lopez, an oncologist, collected photographs for 25 years, and five years ago, opened the Photography 414 Gallery in Fredericksburg.

"She talked a lot about (the project) but was very shy about it," Jose Lopez said. "But the pictures and the oral history is just incredible.

With her husband's encouragement, Rhonda Lashley Lopez agreed to show her work in the gallery starting Saturday and every weekend for the month. She also called the University of Texas Press again.

"This time I'm really going to do it, and he's going to make me do it," she said.

Don't Make Me Go to Town: Ranchwomen of the Texas Hill Country

Who: Photographer Rhonda Lashley Lopez

What: Opening reception with Lopez

When: 2-7 p.m. Saturday. Exhibit will remain open noon to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays in November

Where: Photography 414

Gallery, located at 414 E. Main St. in Fredericksburg

For more information: Log on to www.photography414.com or call 830-998-5309

Newstex ID: KRTB-0413-39511058