Kelli Connell A World Imagined

Spring 2015
Silver Eye Center for Photography

A World Imagined features the work of Kelli Connell (Chicago, IL) and Sara Macel (Brooklyn, NY) who each explore the emotional and psychological terrain of personal relationships. Each artists’ projects offer opportunities to reflect on authorship, on photographic construction, and on ways in which we define relationships through our subjective experiences of them. The exhibition is organized by Leo Hsu, adjunct professor, Carnegie Mellon University, writer, and photographer, and David Oresick, Executive Director, Silver Eye Center for Photography.

Participating Artists

  1. Kelli Connell’s work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer / sitter relationships. Her work is 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, and Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications of her work include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture), Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture) and Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture). Connell has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and The Center for Creative Photography. Kelli Connell lives in Chicago where she teaches at Columbia College Chicago. 

  2. Sara Macel (b. 1981 Houston, TX) is an artist and photographer based in Queens, NY. She received her BFA in Photography + Imaging from NYU (2003) and her MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts (2011). Macel is currently the Photography Program Coordinator and Photography Instructor at the State University of New York (SUNY) Rockland Community College. Her photographic work is narratively-based and often deals with themes of the archive, family, memory, place and time.

    Macel’s work has been internationally exhibited and is in various private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Cleveland Museum of Art, Harry Ransom Center, and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Sara was named one of PDN's 30 Photographers to Watch in 2015. She is a recipient of the Individual Photographer's Fellowship Grant from the Aaron Siskind Foundation and was an artist-in-residence at Light Work in Syracuse, NY in 2017.

    Her first monograph, May the Road Rise to Meet You (Daylight Books), was named one of PDN’s best photo books of the year. A traveling exhibition of that work was shown in solo shows around the country. Her new series What Did the Deep Sea Say received an Editor’s Choice award at CENTER Santa Fe and is out now from Kehrer Verlag.