Kelli Connell applies digital magic to photos

Most people who walk into Gallery 339 and see Kelli Connell’s large color photographs of two blond-haired women in various intimate tableaux will assume that they’re seeing two individuals in a relationship who just happen to look remarkably alike. Or that the two are twins and the images of affectionate moments between them were staged by Connell. But what Connell has done is far more intriguing — she has used only one model. Her scenes are in fact digital assemblages of multiple images, put together so seamlessly that they appear to be one picture.What seems to me the most interesting aspect of her invented scenes, once you learn that they depict a single person in two roles, is the way she has managed to portray two distinct personalities and roles in a relationship. One woman seems female in the conventional sense, the other a more conventionally masculine type. Then again, maybe it is you, the viewer, and not Connell, who is doing the gender stereotyping. In Connell’s book of this series, Double Life, published by Decode books in 2011, I saw one steamy image that was not included in her show, and wondered if the gallery chose to avoid a potential controversy (the show is installed in the front room, which has windows on both 21st Street and Pine Street, and is visible to passersby). Funny to think that it was actually only one nude woman that might have caused a fuss.