[NOTE: This entry has been edited. Kelli Connell used a model for the photos. They were not images of herself.]

A CHICAGO photographer has eerily illustrated the narcissism of homosexuality. Kelli Connell’s exhibit of photographs, Double Life, at a prominent Chicago art gallery, juxtaposes photoshopped images of herself, portraying a relationship between seemingly two women who are really the same person.

Kelli and Kelli (the women are a projection of the artist) are depicted in bed together, in a cafe, in an amusement park, in a pool hall, in the car. Their relationship is both icy and steamy, too close for communion. 

The Catherine Edelman Gallery will be exhibiting Connell’s works in September. Catherine Edelman is a lesbian. According to the gallery, the photos are part of Connell’s exploration of identity: 

Kelli Connell’s portraits appear to document a relationship between two women. Their idiom looks familiar: a young couple caught up in everyday moments of pleasure and reflection, a picnic in the park, playing pool in a bar, taking a bubble bath together. The first flicker of unease comes as soon as the viewer registers the similarity of the two subjects, who seem to be twins. In fact, Connell has photographed the same model portraying both roles, digitally combining the two images so seamlessly that not a trace remains of their construction. Connell has been at the forefront of artists using digital technologies for the past decade. Through her photographs she addresses complex issues about identity and visual rhetoric.

As she states in an interview in the book: 

“I’ve always seen identity as something that is very fluid and as such I usually shy away from labels altogether. Still, a larger part of this work explores the nature of identity formation. In my own personal history, the process of questioning my sexuality was confounding, because the conventional categories, and even the need to categorize in the first place felt like…something being pushed on me. Meanwhile the internal experience of my sexual and gender identity was quite natural and yet not a static thing at all. Perhaps this work is trying to figure out why we rely on categories and labels the way we do.”

                                                      — Comments —

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

The Edelman Gallery promotional copy reads: “Connell [the photographer] has been at the forefront of artists using digital technologies for the past decade. Through her photographs she addresses complex issues about identity and visual rhetoric.” Connell herself apparently told an interviewer: “I’ve always seen identity as something that is very fluid… In my own personal history, the process of questioning my sexuality was confounding… Perhaps this work is trying to figure out why we rely on categories and labels the way we do.” 

Narcissism, which you rightly invoke in your commentary, tends to solipsism. Connell’s photographs, reliant on “digital technologies,” are not only narcissistic; they are also solipsistic and soulless, as all so-called digital art invariably is. Connell’s rhetoric, for its part, is the usual discursive trained-seal act of someone who has been through a postmodern graduate program, absolutely predictable both in its awkward diction (“questioning my sexuality,” “my own personal history”) and its conjuration of the omnipresent “process.” 

Really, what does it mean, “the process of questioning my sexuality was confounding”? It means little more than: Hey, look at me! Or in this case: Hey, look at me, I’m having sex with myself!

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