Kelli Connell, Betsy, Lake Ediza, 2015, © Kelli Connell, Courtesy of artist
TITLE_NAME :
Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis
23/08/2025 - 06/12/2025
Center for Creative Photography
1030 N Olive Rd
AZ 85719 Tucson
ccp.arizona.edu/
Over the last ten years, American photographer Kelli Connell (b. 1974) has researched the lives and relationship of writer Charis Wilson (1914–2009) and photographer Edward Weston (1886–1958), whose archives are held at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP).
Using Wilson’s writing and Weston’s photographs as a guide, Connell traveled to locales where Wilson and Weston lived, made work, and spent time together. With her partner at the time, Betsy Odom (b. 1980), Connell retraced the couple’s explorations through the American West made some eighty years earlier to produce their landmark book California and the West (1940). That journey resulted in revelatory photographs and a searching narrative, weaving together Connell’s experience and her new understanding of Charis and Edward.
This exhibition pairs more than 40 of Connell’s new color and black-and-white photographs with nearly 45 prints of Edward’s earlier views from 1934—1945, including his pictures of Charis and those made when the couple traveled together. Throughout the exhibition, fragments of text bring Connell’s and Wilson’s voices engage in dialogue with original prints, guiding the visitor to consider how stories of an individual’s complex life risk being distilled, generalized, or misremembered.
23/08/2025 - 06/12/2025
Center for Creative Photography
1030 N Olive Rd
AZ 85719 Tucson
ccp.arizona.edu/
Over the last ten years, American photographer Kelli Connell (b. 1974) has researched the lives and relationship of writer Charis Wilson (1914–2009) and photographer Edward Weston (1886–1958), whose archives are held at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP).
Using Wilson’s writing and Weston’s photographs as a guide, Connell traveled to locales where Wilson and Weston lived, made work, and spent time together. With her partner at the time, Betsy Odom (b. 1980), Connell retraced the couple’s explorations through the American West made some eighty years earlier to produce their landmark book California and the West (1940). That journey resulted in revelatory photographs and a searching narrative, weaving together Connell’s experience and her new understanding of Charis and Edward.
This exhibition pairs more than 40 of Connell’s new color and black-and-white photographs with nearly 45 prints of Edward’s earlier views from 1934—1945, including his pictures of Charis and those made when the couple traveled together. Throughout the exhibition, fragments of text bring Connell’s and Wilson’s voices engage in dialogue with original prints, guiding the visitor to consider how stories of an individual’s complex life risk being distilled, generalized, or misremembered.