HSC&A / Online Artist Talk Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis
Kelli Connell, Golden Canyon, 2016
HSC&A / Online Artist Talk
Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis
Thursday, March 13 at 3pm PT / 6pm ET
Hosted by: Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles
Join us for an online artist lecture with Kelli Connell, where she will discuss her most recent body of photographs, Pictures for Charis, currently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Kelli will address photographer-sitter dynamics, gender, identity and sexuality with respect to her project— inspired by Charis Wilson’s relationship with Edward Weston.
The presentation will be followed by an open Q & A moderated by Hannah Sloan. This free, public-facing online conversation is sponsored by the Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles (PAC LA).
Kelli Connell, Preston, 2013
Kelli Connell, Dune Bones, 2016
/ About
Kelli Connell’s Pictures for Charis is loosely based on the life of Charis Wilson and the time she spent with photographer Edward Weston from 1934 - 1945. Using Through Another Lens: My Life with Edward Weston (Wilson’s autobiography) and California and the West (with text written by Wilson and images by Weston) as a guide, Pictures for Charis takes a closer look at photographer-to-sitter relationships as Kelli Connell and her previous partner, Betsy Odom, travel to diverse California locales where Wilson and Weston lived and made work together.
Pictures for Charis serves as an homage to Charis Wilson, and as a backdrop to raise questions about gender, sexuality and relationship dynamics in the twenty-first century. The monograph Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture & Center for Creative Photography: March, 2024) includes photographs and writing by Connell as well as passages written by Wilson and photographs made by Weston.
Pictures for Charis; Aperture & Center for Creative Photography: March, 2024
“For two months in 2023 I lived at Wildcat Hill in the Carmel Highlands. Anyone who loves photo history will know the significance of this place— where Edward Weston and Charis Wilson lived, collaborated and held court with luminaries of the art world for over a decade. I poked around in Weston’s darkroom, and shared dinners with his family in the well maintained cabin-home where Charis was often photographed. I took walks every day around Point Lobos where Weston found inspiration and made his finest photographic work. The place and its legacy left an indelible impression, and when I saw Kelli Connell’s project, I was immediately hooked.”
—Hannah Sloan
Pictures for Charis was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The exhibition is now on view through May 2025 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio and will travel to the Center for Creative Photography, Tuscon, in August 2025.
Connell’s work is held 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 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).
Connell has received fellowships and residencies from The Guggenheim Foundation; MacDowell; PLAYA; Peaked Hill Trust; LATITUDE; Light Work and The Center for Creative Photography. Connell is a professor at Columbia College, Chicago.
About PAC
The Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles creates unique collaborative programming that engages and educates the community in an evolving public conversation about photography and photo-based art. PAC believes that photography and photo-based art connects us to one another and pushes the boundaries of our understanding and fosters a deeper understanding of contemporary artists and their influence on our culture. PAC engages a diverse community through active learning opportunities – viewing and discussing classic and contemporary photography, hearing lectures by experts, engaging in an ongoing dialogue with artists and participating in photo-focused travel.
