1. Kelli Connell Her images were created from scanning and manipulating two or more negatives in Adobe Photoshop. Using the computer as a tool to create a “believable” situation is not that different from accepting any photograph as an object of truth, or by creating a story about two people seen laughing, making-out, or quarreling in a restaurant. These photographs reconstruct the private relationships that she has experienced personally, witnessed in public, or watched on television. The events portrayed in her photographs look believable, yet have never occurred.

2. Kelli Connell Her work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Microsoft, Haggerty Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Dallas Museum of Art. Connell’s first full length monograph entitled Kelli Connell: Double Life was released by DECODE Books in August, 2011. Other publications include MP3: Midwest Photographersʼ Publication Project (Aperture: New York and Museum of Contemporary Photography: Chicago, 2006), Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography (Phaidon Press: London, 2006), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture: New York, 2008), and Auto Focus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography (The Monacelli Press: New York, 2010). Her work has been showcased in Adbusters, American Photo Magazine, Art in America, ARTnews, Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts, DIVA Magazine, EXIT Express, Foam Magazine, Gente di Fotografia, Girls Like Us, The New York Blade, and The New York Times. Connell’s work is represented by Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago and Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.

3. Kelli Connell Influence - Larry Sultan - Pictures From Home Appropriation of techniques used in documentary photography The importance of the images lies in the representation of interior dilemmas portrayed as an external object – a photograph. Through these images the audience is presented with “constructed realities”

4. Kelli Connell Influence - Larry Sultan - Pictures From Home The work is an honest representation of the duality or multiplicity of the self in regards to decisions about intimate relationships, family, belief systems and lifestyle options

5. Kelli Connell Influence - Francesca Woodman – Female Portraits

6. Kelli Connell Her Focus Sexuality Gender roles The Self the masculine and feminine psyche the irrational and rational self the exterior and interior self the motivated and resigned self Intersection between fact and fiction When fiction became a way to make work look more factual or look more real

7. Kelli Connell Technique Her Model - Kiba Jacobson She comes with ideas about the image and the content foremost The technology is a supporter to that idea Photoshop is a tool used to achieve a certain amount of believability Multiple imaging initially 5 or more

8. Kelli Connell Technique Reduced to two images Images immediately began to function on multiple levels. The chemistry, body language, subtle visual cues you might find in a “documentary” image of a couple function identically even when the original interaction never happened. Most of her images are from two images that are loosely stitched together Reshoots rather than spend time on the computer to make it work The extent of her Photoshop work is pretty basic stitching images together simple retouching color correcting

9. Questions Do you think her use of Photoshop is effective? Do you think she captures the multiple selves in her images Do you think her work would be as effective with multiple models? Do you think she could make better use Photoshop?