Photographer Spotlight: Chris Kelly
Name/Nombre: Chris Kelly (He/Him/His)
Location/Ubicación: Washington Heights, Nomad
Walks Attended/Caminatas atendidos: 10+
Occupation/Ocupación: Science and photography educator/Educador de ciencias y fotografía
Links:
How long have you been a photographer?
I've been taking snapshots since high school (late 2000s), but didn't take take technical photography more seriously until 2018 after picking up my first DSLR becoming a teacher and living in NYC.
What got you into photography?
There were actually multiple 'sparks' over the years; back in high school, I was keen to get pictures of my pet budgies and dog (haha). Moving into my 20s and my peak bird watching years, I was a total wildlife geek, and so photography back then was mostly centered around sharp photos of various flora/fauna-- but mostly for identification purposes or as documentation of a trip. Gradually these became more pleasing to the eye, and when I got my first DSLR in NYC I was hooked. I was on that steep slope of the learning curve: YouTube, books, asking fellow photographers how they shot-- that kind of thing. Then between living in the city, and the global pandemic in 2020, my % of street photography rose exponentially relative to nature work...photography became a mental health release valve, as scenes in New York took on emotional metaphor and allowed me to process some of the horror of that time period: both societally, and also personally, as I struggled with heartbreak, familial losses, long covid, and pandemic teaching. Today, I shoot a bunch of different genres, but that increase in human subjects, photojournalism almost, seems here to stay.
Where are you based?
Good question! I was in Washington Heights from 2017 through early 2023, but am figuring out visa matters for a potential relocation to Namibia or South Africa. Presently I'm in Ardmore, PA just outside Philly for a few months.
Which was your favorite Uptown Photowalk?
Actually the walks in 2019, pre-pandemic, were probably my favorite....there's something electrifying about being in that early part of a learning curve, picking everyone's brains, being welcomed (more than I deserve) into the uptown photo community. I was new to shooting street back then, and the uptown-focused walks from Word Up into the 170s and 180s were exhilarating, feeding off the energy of the Heights. A lot of those photographers became some of my first non-work friends in the city! I think I was less perfectionistic about photography back then, too...and more idealistic about living in New York. The streets seemed more at-ease than after the pandemic, for obvious reasons: worsening political polarization, the twin public health and housing/economic crisis, etc.
What are your favorite types of photography?
Nowadays, it's anything that reaches out and smacks you with emotion; grief on the street, a songbird in the wildfire smoke singing its resilient heart out, embracing lovers framed in the GWB.
Do you have a favorite camera?
I've bonded with all of my cameras, though it's the ones that opened new photographic doors for me that are the most nostalgic. My first superzoom after college, the Canon PowerShot SX40 HS that enabled me to ID birds in Pokemon style fashion, captured South Africa for my time living there in 2013; the sports/wildlife workhorse the Nikon D500 that prompted me to learn how photography works and apply that to the Heights; Chris Lonardo's old small-but-mighty Sony RX-1 that taught me about wide aperture, and through which I documented our 2020 descent and re-emergence.
I remember I teared up when insurance bought me out of the D500 in December 2020 when it had a shutter issue; the devices become extensions of you and your work.
Want to tell us a bit about your work?
I've gone through a few careers already, but I also think they inform each other: climate scientist, science teacher, and now I’m moving into the education nonprofit space. I also do some professional photographic and individual student tutoring work. It’s a dream to one day publish my writing and images, though!
Though these paths could seem disconnected, I think their commonality is the narrative: story-telling. I could have just as easily been a diplomat (which was my undergrad major) as a post colonial historian as a paleo climate scientist as a teacher or photojournalist or librarian. I'm obsessed with the narrative and complexities of the human experience.
What is your favorite part about Uptown?
It's the energy, and the welcoming nature of the community of Uptown, for me. But you could say so much more, too. Landscape: steep topography, rare for Manhattan, the soaring bridge, buttressed by the Palisade cliffs. The cultural diversity, especially through time: the descendants of German Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution, the Little DR, recalcitrant Irish folks who resisted white flight, Puerto Rican families at Highbridge Pool, etc. In so many ways the Heights is a microcosm of NY, of U.S. immigration histories. Not to mention the tapestry of the African diaspora just south in Harlem.
Are you a professional photographer?
I have completed some professional photographic work, though it is by no means my full-time employment. Mostly this is comprised of individual photoshoots when I lived in New York, though I'm particularly proud of one larger project: updating the wall art of the Harvard Club of NY to reflect a more inclusive current club membership and complement their mid-20th century Alfred Eisenstaedt pieces.
Do you have anything else you'd like to share?
I often get asked by Americans 'Why South Africa' in terms of my current time-splitting arrangement and work pursuits that side.
I think interestingly there is some overlap with Washington Heights in explaining why I find southern Africa so captivating as a place I keep coming back to, mentally, and now physically, in the decade since I lived in Durban in 2013-14. For me, it's the combination of high natural diversity and cultural diversity, in the context of a society founded on reconciliation—even though that process doesn't always proceed elegantly. More so than the U.S. you have overt pluralism: e.g. 11 official languages, a national anthem that makes overtures to distinct languages and cultures within SA as part of the national fabric, mosques working with churches for social good in the absence of the state. And, of course, all of this lies in the long shadow of apartheid, now thirty years into democracy. Indeed I keep coming back to these themes of forgiveness, multiculturalism, injustice, etc., in my life and my photography.
African penguins emerging from the icy South Atlantic, while iridescent-green sunbirds flit back and forth on the hillslopes of a mountain that is home to more plant species than the entirety of Britain. Within 15-30 minutes driving, you could transect the richest street in southern Africa (Porsche visible through the garage windows) and the murder capital of the southern hemisphere. In just one week in Durbs this past May I photographed a Hare Krishna beach festival, a Passover Seder, the botanical gardens on Easter Sunday, and an Iftar event. The rainbow nation always glowing— though sometimes the coals catch fire.
Here is something from a photo essay I wrote from Cape Town in March this year (2023): "For years I’ve fallen flat when trying to describe the valence, the horrible magnetism of southern Africa. For SA lays bare the contradictions of the modern human experience in a way that is in your face, all the time.
The gratuitousness of it: the brutality, the ineffable beauty, the betrayal (of equality, reconciliation, of revolution, of what would be humane), the irrational resilience, the falseness of empire. All set against the context of the longue duree we don't always put so overtly: this is our species’ ancestral homeland. This is where we're from. And, to a large extent, this is who we are."
