Douglas Rhodenbaugh is a photodocumentarian who specializes in Latin America. A 20 year veteran educator in Government, Social Studies, and Adult English as a Second Language, he divides his time between his classroom at Fulmore Middle School, and Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico. As a teacher, he strives to use the camera to bring his students a large sense of community, as well as a sense of culture, tradition, and social conscience.

As a photographer, he uses his art to promote personal projects such as an Art School for Indigenous Guatemalan children, a fund that feeds, clothes, and educates Guatemalan orphans, and a then year effort with his students in Austin that provide thousands of Guatemalan school children with supplies each year. He is currently raising funds for a children's art school in Tupetlac, Mexico with the Hermanos de Juan Diego. Whether photographing a local festival, or gathering portraits of children working in clothing factories, he tries to capture personal dignity in his subjects that are often caught on a global stage, in a rapidly shrinking world, in a difficult and often anonymous cultural and economic situation where schooling, family, faith, migration, and even survival depend on the price of coffee beans, or the newest fashions in American outlet malls.

The Virgen de Guadalupe manifests herself everywhere. As the patroness of Mexico and the Empress of the Americas, she is the guardian of the nation and the family. As a cultural icon, she appears on rock concert t-shirts and in folk art museums. As the Mother of God, she calls us all to be her children, and still asks, "Where are you going? Where are you headed?" This is Douglas Rhodenbaugh's 21 st one man exhibition, and his 2 nd at La Peña. These photographs are culled from his documentary work, and other projects. They are a sampling of Her appearances in his life during the last year. Light, shadow, texture, skin, and faith: These combined elements, some deliberate, and others passing and accidental converge for his exhibit and across the Americas to celebrate her presence and remind us of who we are, but, more importantly, asking us who we are becoming.