Elizabeth Kelly

Artist Statement

Elizabeth Kelly is a photographer and art educator working primarily in traditional and alternative process photographic techniques. Her artistic and theoretical work has a substantial focus on the ethics of portraiture and expanding access to traditional photo education which is integrated into her practice through collaboration and community work based on teaching and traditional photography.

"Fragments" (2021–2022, mixed-media immersive installation including photographic works on paper, sculptural works, audio and video) is a contemporary reconstruction of my family's personal history. Images, film, objects and audio dating from the 1920s to the 1990s are combined and manipulated to create a distorted version of a home. Alteration is present in every aspect of the work, sometimes major and sometimes indistinguishable. Through this work, the viewer can envision the shifting and passing of memory over lifetimes and generations. The utilization of my grandfather's photographs not only connects me to my own past, but also tells a story of the small town south and my journey to create a life away from that singular experience. 

This body of work is my first self-reflective work in over five years, brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and my relocation out of Arkansas, where I had been living for 10 years before moving to Philadelphia. Because the bulk of my recent work has been community and subject focused, I felt that the pandemic and my relocation presented an obstacle for true connection and opportunity to collaborate with a new community here in Philadelphia. This, combined with the passing of my grandmother in 2019, which provided me with a rich film archive, birthed the project as it is now seen today. Though self-reflective work does not make up much of my practice, I believe that "Fragments" communicates with my other works by connecting the viewer to the past, the small town south, and my personal perspective as an artist.

View more of Elizabeth's work.

IMAGE GALLERY: FRAGMENTS

Click through to enlarge and view individual artworks from Elizabeth's MFA thesis project.