tography that will go on display this Sunday at

tography that will go on display this Sunday at the Middle St. Gallery in - Washington, Virginia.

Andrake spent three years in Morocco. A Peace Corps volunteer, her enlistment was prompted by the need to “experience” another culture as something other than a tourist. “The ■ best way to do it is to work there,” she i explained. She mastered Arabic and - bought a good camera. The first al- lowed her to communicate with and understand the Moroccan people. The second gave her the means to capture and preserve her experiences.

When she returned to Washington, D.C., and a staff job at Peace Corps headquarters, she brought with her boxes and albums of pictures and an interest in photography. It took just two courses at the Corcoran School of Art and an enthusiastic reception for her work to develop an avocation into a vocation.

She had submitted a portfolio in seeking acceptance to a Corcoran summer workshop in Maine. A collection of oversized black and white self-portraits that emphasized texture and line, the photographs caught the attention of an instructor and jurist. “He wanted to see other reactions so he stuck my portfolio in with the regular applications to the Corcoran School of Art. I was accepted unanimously by the admissions committee!

“I told myself, ‘You’re 30 years old. If you’re going to do this, you’ve got to be serious.’ So I quit my safe, secure—and relatively well-paying—government job and went into the Corcoran’s fine arts photography program full time.”

She finished in 1980, capping her studies with an individual exhibition, and has since taken free-lance photography jobs and government consultant stints to pay the bills while she practiced her art. But Andrake realized last year that art was getting the short tick on the clock so she took a 12 month sabbatical to concentrate solelv on rampra