Fine Art nominee

The primary image in this composite photo was taken at the Mitla Oaxaca Ruins in Mexico, a pre-Hispanic archeological complex believed to be an ancient religious center. Mitla, Nahuatl for “place of the dead,” is considered a gateway between the living and the dead by the Zapotec people. The ruins are more than 10,000 years old.

I was with a tour group when we walked into this compelling structure with large columns.
The image consists of four layers, the main layer taken with an iPhone 11. The image of the skeletons was taken in the Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City. The eagle and snake images, symbols of Mexico that appear on its flag, are from Wikimedia Commons.

Laurie McDonald is a writer, graphic designer, photographer, and a media artist. As a writer, her experience ranges from novels to screenplays to corporate/business writing. Using the pseudonym Eva Rome, she has written and published three books: Travel for STOICS; What It Means: Myth, Symbol, and Archetype in the Third Millennium, Vol. 1; and Location X: A Quest for Place. She has served as a screenplay consultant to the National Endowment for the Arts Media Grants Committee, as a contract screenplay and script writer/consultant, and as both a book editor and book cover designer. As a graphic designer and photographer, she has designed and built Web sites, brochures and business cards, and graphics for video.

She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship and four American Film Institute/NEA Fellowships. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pierre du Chardin Gallery (Paris), The Gallery of Modern Art (Rome), and at festivals including the American Film Institute’s Film/Video Festival, the Tokyo Video Festival, the Festival du Cinema in Montreal, and at Filmfest (Berlin, Budapest, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Moscow).