Kelli Connell: o_Man!
Folio Gallery of the School of Art
Kelli Connell is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer-sitter relationships. This exhibition focuses on her o_Man! project on which she collaborated with Natalie Krick.
In o_Man! Kelli Connell and Natalie Krick reimagine Edward Steichen's oeuvre and his subsequent influence on the photographic medium through his work as a war photographer, chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair, delphinium breeder and director of the department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art 1947-1962.
Connell and Krick crop, composite, re-edit, colorize, and re-sequence images from Steichen’s archives. Through a process of text erasures and word play, Connell and Krick work with the original language found in the Family of Man exhibition catalogue. These new text and image interpretations serve to interrogate their originals, reflecting upon what narratives are told, by whom, and for whom. Through reimagining Steichen’s work, Connell and Krick’s photographs raise questions about the history of photography, a history that is all-to-often incomplete, imperfect and privileged in its authorship.
The o_Man! exhibition is on view in the Folio Gallery of the Art Building through October 12th.
Connell’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications of her work include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture and Center for Creative Photography, March 2024), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture), and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books).