“A portrait not only documents the likeness of someone at a particular time in a particular place, but it also records the photographer and model’s relationship to one another in that moment. Their combined energies are projected and preserved. The most captivating portraits contain an energy that is palpable—an intense desire or an active and revealing awkwardness that peels off a surface layer to show something raw underneath.”
—Kelli Connell
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 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.
Curated by Rebecca Senf in collaboration with Gregory Harris and Barbara Tannenbaum, this exhibition is co-organized by the Center for Creative Photography; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the Cleveland Museum of Art. It includes text excerpts from the companion monograph Pictures for Charis by Kelli Connell and published by Aperture and the Center for Creative Photography, 2024.
At the CCP, major support for this exhibition and its companion publication is provided by Max McCauslin and John Smith, and the Peter Salomon Endowment for the Support of Women Artists. A generous Foundation for Advancement in Conservation FAIC)/Tru Vue® Conservation and Exhibition Grant and in-kind support of Optium Museum Acrylic® for preservation of this work was provided by Tru Vue, Inc. and Larson-Juhl.