Kelli Connell


Kelli Connell is an American contemporary photographer. Connell is known for creating portraits, which may appear as self-portraits. Her work is held in the collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Dallas Museum of Art.

Early life and education

Kelli Connell was born in 1974 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Connell took her first photography class as a junior in high school, and was influenced early on by the work of Roni Horn, Francesca Woodman, and Larry Sultan. She received her BFA in Photography and Visual Arts Studies at the University of North Texas. In 2003, Connell received her Masters in Fine Arts in Photography and a minor in Art history from Texas Woman’s University.

Artistic career

Connell became a photographer to explore how photography can raise questions. In 2011, Decode Books released her first monograph, Double Life, in which she presented 36 color photographs of two young women occupied in their day to day activities of pleasure and reflection. Double Life seeks to question ideas of identity, gender roles, and expectations made by society on the individual. The series, which depicts a woman in a romantic relationship with herself, shows the "couple" having intimate and private moments in their lives. Connell uses her art to define the multiple sides of the self in the overall human experience. The portraits are also a case of identity. Connell worked with the same model over a series of years to produce the work.
Until 2025, she served as a professor at Columbia College Chicago, where she taught, mentored, and "established herself as part of an important group of Chicago photographers exploring a distinctive brand of psychological portraiture."

Collections

Connell is married to sculptor Betsy Odom.