In most cases being a victim of theft isn't something that's normally celebrated, but one photographer seems to have turned a very bad situation into a particularly good one.
Melanie Willhide, a photographer and teacher out in Los Angeles, had the misfortune of having her computer stolen. Besides losing all her personal images, she was faced with the dread of losing two long term projects that she had been working on. To make matters worse they took her back-up drives as well. So much for the backing-up argument.
At this point, I think many would have just thrown in the towel, but the world works in mysterious ways. She was contacted by the police, saying that they found her computer in the backseat of a car that had been pulled over. Ecstatic that she would have her work back, the bubble of optimism was quickly burst as she found the hard drives were wiped clean. Instead all that remained was a screensaver of the thief and his girlfriend posing with Dodgers caps.
As with all hard drives, there's always that last inkling of hope thanks to the magic of recovery software. Alas, the images that came back from the digital graveyard were heavily corrupted, sporting strange colors with weird repetitive splicing. Similar to Sir Isaac Newton getting hit in the head with a glitchy apple, Willhide felt that the corrupted images were actually better than the originals. Taking a cue from the computers dirty work, she figured out how to digitally distress her images manually through Photoshop. The results became part of a collection which she titled “To Adrian Rodriguez, with Love”, a nod to the guy who stole her computer and unknowingly inspired her embrace altered photographs.
After all those ups and downs, it seems like the photographer ultimately stole the show with an unintentional inspiration from a would-be computer thief and hard drive recovery software.
Melanie Willhide - Little Boy Blue 2000
Click here to see more examples of Melanie Willhide's glitch art