A Human Rights Self Portrait: Revisiting Kelli Connell’s “Pictures for Charis”
For my final project in my Photo, New Media, and Social Change class, my professor asked us to create a “Human Rights Selfie.” Our photos could be of ourselves or someone else as long as we shaped the project with our subject. The image must represent a human right of our choice, pulled from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. For this project, I revisited Kelli Connell’s series Pictures for Charis. I feel that Connell’s work as a queer photographer, and especially the collection Pictures for Charis , is keenly related to the human right I chose to represent: the right to freedom of opinion and expression, also known as Article 19 of the UDHR. When wrapping up my second project for this class, a recreation of two images from Pictures for Charis , I found a picture from the collection that I had somehow missed in my prior views. This image, a picture of Connell’s wife Betsy, is so...
