<\/p>\n ![\"Kelli](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/8c1704b\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2500x1668+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F14%2F87%2Fc0df275c488da77520ad3da982d0%2Fkelliconnell-2601240143.jpg\")
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Allison Peters Quinn, who took over as executive director and chief curator of the Elmhurst Art Museum in 2024, believes Connell (center) ranks among Chicago\u2019s most important photographers.<\/p>\n
Co-organized by the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Cleveland Museum of Art and High Museum of Art in Atlanta, \u201cLiving with Modernism: Kelli Connell\u201d spans previous work and new. The smaller of the two features eight fresh images commissioned by the Elmhurst Museum that are a continuation of Connell\u2019s \u201cDouble Life\u201d series, which first gained her widespread attention in 2007 at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York.<\/p>\n
The other showcases 45 of Connell\u2019s large-scale images from her well-known series \u201cPictures of Charis.\u201d The series, which began with a photograph Connell took of her then-partner Betsy Odom on a bed at a Michigan inn in 2009, was inspired by photographer Edward Weston. Weston was known for pictures he made showing his model and companion, Charis Wilson, from 1934 until their relationship dissolved around 1945.<\/p>\n
Connell, a native of Oklahoma City who grew up in Texas and earned a master\u2019s degree from the Texas Woman\u2019s University, had little interest in Weston\u2019s work when she first encountered it as a student. But that 2009 photograph reminded her of Weston\u2019s well-known image of a curved body on the dunes of Oceano, Calif.<\/p>\n
Connell wondered about the identity of this mystery woman, who was simply known as \u201cNude\u201d in the titles of Weston\u2019s photos. She ultimately learned it was Charis Wilson and discovered that Wilson was an aspiring writer who supplied the text for Weston\u2019s famous 1940 photography book, \u201cCalifornia and the West.\u201d The muse later wrote a memoir called \u201cThrough Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018This is amazing,\u2019\u201d Connell said. \u201cShe is hilarious. She is really witty. I want to know more about her.\u201d<\/p>\n
That started the odyssey that became \u201cPictures for Charis.\u201d Like Weston, who received a Guggenheim Fellowship to undertake the 1,110 photographs of the American West that would make up his 1940 book, Connell also received a fellowship. From 2014 through 2022, she returned to many of the sites Weston featured, but with Odom serving as her model and muse. She made not re-creations of Weston\u2019s images from some 80 years earlier but contemporary re-interpretations and responses filtered through her research on Wilson, who died in 2009.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsn\u2019t it crazy,\u201d Connell said, \u201cthat I went down a rabbit hole to spend so much time with this woman that I\u2019ll never meet?\u201d<\/p>\n
Connell\u2019s large-scale images will line the walls of the Elmhurst gallery, and 48 of Weston\u2019s vintage 8-by-10 prints from the Center for Creative Photography will be shown in flat vitrines in the center of the space. The arrangement will allow viewers to look across the room and see the multilayered connections between the two bodies of work.<\/p>\n
In the smaller of the two exhibitions, \u201cDouble Life,\u201d Connell uses digital manipulation to make it appear that her subject, the model Kiba Jacobson, is playing two different people or perhaps two sides of the same person in a range of settings and activities. Jacobson has served as a model for the series since it began in 2002.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe \u2018Double Life\u2019 work started to really take off,\u201d Connell said, \u201cbecause it hit at a time when people were talking about truth vs. fiction in photography. People were just starting to use Photoshop compositing. Identity was also a topic that was starting to come up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The latest eight images in the series were taken in Mies van der Rohe\u2019s 1952 McCormick House and will be exhibited there. The modernist single-family home was moved from its original location in the 1990s and is part of the Elmhurst Museum campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Relationships, encounters and their sometimes fraught dynamics pervade Kelli Connell\u2019s thoughtful, quietly provocative images, which explore themes like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-423296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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