“Exploring Queer Identity in Kelli Connell’s Americana”
**Exploring Kelli Connell’s “Pictures for Charis”: Reclaiming Feminine Representation in the American Landscape**
The narrative of two explorers embarking on a transformative journey across the United States is a time-honored trope in American culture. From Mark Twain’s *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* to Jack Kerouac’s *On the Road*, the concept of travel as a means for self-discovery has historically captivated audiences. However, much of this tradition is steeped in the ideology of Manifest Destiny—a colonialist mindset that justifies territorial domination and exploitation. Often driven by cis-het White male perspectives, these narratives emphasize self-actualization while marginalizing others.
Kelli Connell, an acclaimed photographer, offers a powerful response to these entrenched patterns with her exhibition *Pictures for Charis*, currently on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Inspired by Edward Weston’s photographic work and travels with writer Charis Wilson, Connell critiques, reimagines, and subverts these historical narratives to create imagery that is inclusive, empowering, and steeped in nontraditional perspectives.
### Revisiting Edward Weston and Charis Wilson’s Collaboration
In the 1930s, Edward Weston and Charis Wilson, romantic partners at the time, journeyed through the American West. Their collaboration culminated in the 1940 photobook *California and the West*, a collection of Weston’s black-and-white landscapes and portraits of a frequently nude Wilson amidst these sprawling terrains. Weston’s photographs helped romanticize the American landscape, fusing human vulnerability with environmental majesty. However, as Connell points out, these images also perpetuated a troubling dynamic: Wilson’s nude form was often treated as an extension of the land—a resource for Weston to explore visually and artistically.
Connell zeroes in on this dynamic and upends it, drawing critical parallels to how femininity and the environment have both historically been objectified for the male gaze. Instead of rejecting Weston’s aesthetic entirely, Connell reframes it, reclaiming Wilson’s narrative by reenacting Weston’s iconic images with women-centered and queer perspectives.
### Reclaiming the Journey: Connell and Odom’s Exploration
Connell’s project is not just a critique but also a reclamation. Accompanied by her then-partner, Betsy Odom, Connell retraced Weston and Wilson’s journey through the American West. As part of her series, Connell recreated compositions that closely resemble Weston’s iconic works; for instance, her photograph *Doorway II* (2015) echoes Weston’s *Nude* (1936). These beautiful and deeply intentional images borrow Weston’s formal compositions while transforming their meaning.
Connell’s photographs replace the male gaze with a lens of mutuality and inclusivity. The partnership she documents—the intimacy and collaboration between two women—stands in direct contrast to Weston’s dynamic with Wilson, where collaboration became overshadowed by objectification. For Connell, the subjects of her photographs, much like the landscapes they inhabit, are no longer reduced to resources for an artist’s singular agenda. Instead, her work opens the frame for queer desire and nontraditional narratives, inviting deeper inclusivity into the imagery of the American sublime.
### The Romantic Sublime Reimagined
Connell’s work neither erases nor wholly rejects the romantic grandiosity inherent in Weston’s landscapes. Rather, it expands upon it, creating space for marginalized identities and relationships within this visual tradition. In *Oceans Dunes* (2016), for example, Connell demonstrates how vast, dramatic landscapes—the same ones Weston once captured—can also serve as backdrops for narratives that center compassion, equality, and a shared connection to the environment.
By recreating Weston’s works, Connell acknowledges the inherent beauty and history of the American landscape while challenging the exclusivity of its portrayal in art. Her photographs demonstrate that the sublime—historically portrayed as the domain of privileged male perspectives—can and should embrace a diversity of voices and experiences.
### Art as Reclamation
Through *Pictures for Charis*, Connell succeeds in reclaiming both femininity and the American landscape. She deconstructs the visual and ideological foundations underpinning Weston’s iconic works, infusing them with new meaning by centering queer and female perspectives. While Weston’s photographs positioned the landscape and Wilson’s body as elements of conquest and artistry, Connell’s series offers a gentle yet radical reminder that no land or individual exists merely for another’s consumption.
In doing so, Connell makes space for more expansive and nuanced representations of identity in art. Her photographs challenge the viewer to shift their gaze, to see not only the grandeur of the American West but also the multifaceted human stories that shape—and are shaped by—it.
### The Legacy of Artistic (Re)Interpretation
The exhibition succeeds not only as a critique of past artistic conventions but also as an opportunity to reflect on how narratives evolve and change with shifting societal values. Conn