ATLANTA — The story of two intrepid folks setting off on a journey to discover the huge expanse of the USA is well-worn by now. Impressed by the colonialist precept of Manifest Future, the idea that American settlers have 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 reminiscent of On the Highway by Jack Kerouac.
As with the ideology that White settlers used to rationalize the genocide of Indigenous folks, these tales have all the time prioritized cis-het White male characters and their self-actualization, usually 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 one among privilege and pillaging cloaked within the romantic chic. 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, Footage for Charis, on the Excessive Museum of Artwork. Within the Nineteen Thirties, Weston and Wilson, who have been romantically concerned, traversed the American West, resulting in their co-authored e-book California and the West (1940). The e-book contains dozens of Weston’s images of the locales they visited, many that includes Wilson throughout the panorama, reminiscent of “Floating Nude”(1939). Nonetheless others focus completely on exploring Wilson’s physique, as in “Nude” (1934). The truth is, Wilson is nearly all the time photographed within the nude. The continuous insertion of her kind 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 similar — Connell’s “Doorway II” (2015) and Weston’s “Nude” (1936) are significantly 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) need 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 USA 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’s 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) (© Heart for Artistic Pictures, College of Arizona: Edward Weston Archive/ Reward 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) (© Heart for Artistic Pictures, College of Arizona: Edward Weston Archive/ Reward 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) (© Heart for Artistic 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: Footage 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 Heart for Artistic Pictures and the Cleveland Museum of Artwork.
