Silver Eye

In o_ Man!, Kelli Connell and Natalie Krick use collage, reappropriation, and wordplay as subversive tools to interrogate photography’s past.

In 1955, Edward Steichen organized The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Steichen, photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair and director of the photography department at MoMA, ambitiously sought to describe universal aspects of human experience.

The exhibition was an unprecedented success, even as scholars, writers, and artists quickly critiqued its Western-centric and sentimental narrative.

Connell and Krick expand this long legacy of critical-looking by reinterpreting Steichen’s images, and photographs and original language from The Family of Man catalog. o_ Man! challenges the male dominated history of photography and raises questions of patriarchal authority, power, and bodily autonomy vital to our political time.

womanmoan.com

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. Natalie Krick is a Seattle based artist whose work investigates visual perception and pleasure through complicating the act of looking. She holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. In 2015 Krick was a recipient of an Individual Photographer's Fellowship from the Aaron Siskind Foundation for her project Natural Deceptions. In 2017 Natural Deceptions was published by Skylark Editions and Krick was awarded the Aperture Portfolio Prize. Krick’s work has recently been exhibited at SF Camerawork, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Aperture Foundation, The Museum of Sex, and Blue Sky Gallery. Her photographs have been highlighted in several international publications including BOMB, The New Yorker, Vogue Italia, PDN, Aperture, and Vrij Nederland.