Nebraska Wesleyan University’s Elder Gallery will open with a five-week exhibition featuring the people and places of Africa as seen through the lens of photographer Betty Press.

Press is best known for her photographs taken in Africa when she lived and worked in Kenya as a freelance photojournalist. Now living in Hattiesburg, Miss., where she is an adjunct professor of photography at the University of Southern Mississippi, Press photographs the South as well as Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and Africa.

Press’ exhibition at Nebraska Wesleyan University is titled, “I Am Because We Are: African Wisdom in Image and Proverb,” which is also the title of her first photobook. For this project she was named the recipient of the 2012 Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Award in photography.

The exhibit runs September 7 to October 21. An opening reception will be held Friday, September 7 from 4:30-7 p.m. in Elder Gallery, located in the Rogers Center for Fine Arts, 50th Street and Huntington Ave.

Press will be at Nebraska Wesleyan University on Thursday, September 20 as part of the university’s 125th anniversary kickoff. She will give a gallery talk and hold a book signing at 3:30 p.m. in Elder Gallery.

Press had the honor of photographing Audrey Hepburn on her visit to Somalia as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1992 and Harry Belafonte in Rwanda in 1994. Her work has been selected in many juried competitions, and she has received numerous photography awards including selection to the Art of Photography Show in San Diego, Calif. Her photographs have been published in most major magazines and newspapers.

Elder Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. It is free and open to the public.