About Melissa Hogan I grew up in Tennessee and attended the Maret School in Washington, D.C. and Vassar College. I am married and live in Portland, Oregon. In the 1980's and 1990's when my husband and I were living in Switzerland my photographs were exhibited in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Germany, and I was represented by the "Galerie Michele Chomette" in Paris. Since moving to Oregon I have shown work in the Portland galleries "Newspace," "Quality Pictures," "23 Sandy" and "12 x 16," and "The Lightbox Gallery" in Astoria. Galleries I began photographing in the 1980's. Working with a French colleague under the pseudonym "P.M. Hoblargan," a fictional photographer was created. The history of this photographer stretched from the early days of photography in 1849 to the Bauhaus era in the 1920's, with Hoblargan participating in all of the photographic styles from Fox Talbot to Sander. The story ends with the discovery of Hoblargan's negatives in a previously walled up closet in a villa in France in 1980. ...........After I returned to the United States in 1998 I began photographing again, and produced a series of color images based on phrases from conversations overheard while riding the bus in Portland, Oregon. ...........In my current work I reassemble visions and feelings from a vivid group of early childhood memories. Things like tall milkweed plants, floral slipcoveres, rain water in a gutter, and a garter snake passing across a sidewalk were especially important parts of my world.