An area art professor has turned his passion for photography into an opportunity for the community to get a snapshot of days gone by.

Paul Dunlap's "Historic Photographs as a Storytelling Art Form" exhibit opens today at the Historic Vickery House on the campus of North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega.

"I have a real passion for old photographs as windows into a bygone era. They teach us of our past triumphs, celebrations, everyday lives, tragedies, mistakes and failures," said Dunlap, an assistant professor of visual art at North Georgia.

"I also love the freedom of creative interpretations when looking at old photographs."

For his exhibit, Dunlap made prints from historic photographs from the Vanishing Georgia Archives. The archives are housed on the servers of the Digital Library of Georgia at the University of Georgia and document life in Georgia beginning in the 1800s.

"I selected 16 images from the archives that piqued my curiosity for a variety of reasons," Dunlap said.

"Of these, many were windows into the daily lives of common people (in Lumpkin County), such as weddings, funerals, baptisms, college graduation, corn shucking and washing laundry.

"Others were relating to the landscape, such as the building of Highway 52, gold mining, the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and local architecture."

The exhibit opens with a free reception and exhibition from 6:30 to 7 p.m., where Dunlap will lead a discussion about his work. It will be on display until the early fall.

Dunlap's exhibit is a part of the "This Land; These People: The Art of Storytelling in Words and Pictures" project being sponsored by the college's Georgia Appalachian Studies Center. The project is being made possible through a grant from the National Endowment fothe Arts.

Other activities associated with the project include a storytelling concert with Bil Lepp on June 24.