ATLANTA — The story of two intrepid individuals setting off on a journey to discover the huge expanse of the US is well-worn by now. Impressed by the colonialist precept of Manifest Future, the idea that American settlers had been destined to take possession of the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, intertwined with exceptionalism and transcendence, has impressed many canonized tales starting from “Great American Novels” like Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to counterculture classics comparable to On the Highway by Jack Kerouac.
As with the ideology that White settlers used to rationalize the genocide of Indigenous individuals, these tales have all the time prioritized cis-het White male characters and their self-actualization, typically whereas sidelining, exploiting, or eliminating others who don’t match that very particular set of traits. The ensuing picture of Americana lengthy ingrained within the nation’s collective consciousness is considered one of privilege and pillaging cloaked within the romantic elegant. It’s inside this historical past that Kelli Connell creates her artwork.
Kelli Connell, “Preston” (2013), pigmented inkjet print, 32 x 40 inches (81.28 x 101.6 cm) (© Kelli Connell)
Connell turns to Edward Weston’s collaborations with and images of author Charis Wilson because the inspiration for her exhibition, Photos for Charis, on the Excessive Museum of Artwork. Within the Nineteen Thirties, Weston and Wilson, who had been romantically concerned, traversed the American West, resulting in their co-authored e-book California and the West (1940). The e-book consists of dozens of Weston’s images of the locales they visited, many that includes Wilson inside the panorama, comparable to “Floating Nude”(1939). Nonetheless others focus completely on exploring Wilson’s physique, as in “Nude” (1934). In actual fact, Wilson is sort of all the time photographed within the nude. The continuous insertion of her type inside these landscapes creates the impression that her physique is one more a part of it — one other useful resource for Weston to make use of.
Connell and her then-partner, Betsy Odom, retraced Weston and Wilson’s journey, photographing related compositions in lots of the identical locations. Displayed collectively in the identical house, the 2 our bodies of labor seem practically equivalent — Connell’s “Doorway II” (2015) and Weston’s “Nude” (1936) are notably alike. Connell’s reenactment of Weston and Wilson’s collaboration reclaims the presentation of femininity for girls and contextualizes it inside a framework of gay (and, importantly, non-male) want however her work doesn’t deconstruct or refuse the romanticized American panorama that Weston and Wilson helped visualize. Connell’s images include all the identical poetic grandiosity as Weston’s. Each photographers present that the terrain of the US is huge however solely in Connell’s work does the topic of the images, together with the land that surrounds her, exist for greater than the artist alone. Right here, there may be room sufficient for us all.
Edward Weston, “Nude” (1936), gelatin silver print, 9 7/16 x 7 1/2 inches (~24 x 19.05 cm) (© Middle for Inventive Pictures, College of Arizona: Edward Weston Archive/ Present of the Heirs of Edward Weston)
Edward Weston, “Dunes, Oceano” (1936), gelatin silver print, 7 1/2 x 9 9/16 inches (19.05 x ~24.3 cm) (© Middle for Inventive Pictures, College of Arizona: Edward Weston Archive/ Present of the Heirs of Edward Weston)
Kelli Connell, “Doorway II” (2015), pigmented inkjet print, 20 x 25 inches (50.8 x 63.5 cm) (© Kelli Connell)
Kelli Connell, “Oceans Dunes” (2016), pigmented inkjet print, 40 x 50 inches (101.6 x 127 cm) (© Kelli Connell)
Edward Weston, “Nude” (1934), gelatin silver print, 4 1/2 x 3 9/16 inches (11.43 x ~9.05 cm) (© Middle for Inventive Pictures, College of Arizona: Edward Weston Archive)
Kelli Connell, “Junipers” (2016), pigmented inkjet print, 40 x 50 inches (101.6 x 127 cm) (© Kelli Connell)
Kelli Connell: Photos for Charis continues on the Excessive Museum of Artwork (1280 Peachtree Road Northeast, Atlanta, Georgia) by way of January 5, 2025. The exhibition was co-organized by the Excessive Museum, the College of Arizona Middle for Inventive Pictures and the Cleveland Museum of Artwork.
