Skylark Editions | Kelli Connell & Melissa Ann Pinney

As part of our Photobook Month series of events, we are thrilled to have an online conversation between Skylark Edition’s Kelli Connell and Melissa Ann Pinney talking about their collaboration on the book, In Their Own Light.

In Their Own Light: Photographs from Chicago Public Schools relates the story of Melissa Ann Pinney’s five-year artist residency in Chicago Public Schools, from a largely White elementary school to several mostly Black and Latinx high schools. When Pinney began this work in 2018, she had no idea of what was to come. Here, we see how the project evolved and shifted as Pinney found opportunities to deepen connections with students even through an ongoing global pandemic, escalating racial and gender inequities and continuing gun violence. Throughout, Pinney shows us an astonishing range of identities revealed amid friendships and school rituals.

Melissa Ann Pinney is the author of Regarding Emma: Photographs of American Women & Girls (2003), Girl Ascending (2010) and TWO (2015). She has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Photography. Pinney’s photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco MOMA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

About Kelli Connell –

Kelli Connell is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer / sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications of her work include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture, March 2024), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture), and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships and residencies from The Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, PLAYA, Peaked Hill Trust, LATITUDE, Light Work, and The Center for Creative Photography. Connell is an editor at SKYLARK Editions and a professor at Columbia College Chicago.

About Skylark Editions

SKYLARK EDITIONS is a non-profit publishing project based in Chicago that provides a platform for the creation and distribution of innovative photo books by emerging and established artists.