Kelsey Sucena (she/her, b.1994) is a trans* girl in a world on fire. Responding to the tense political climate that situates trans* bodies as a threat to be exterminated, integrated, or otherwise neutralized, Kelsey’s work serves to defend, humanize, preserve, and extend trans* being into a world which denies our humanity.
Her work rests at the intersection of photography and text, often within the bodies of performative slideshows, photobooks, and postal exhibitions. Through ephemeral/projected photo essays and auto-theoretical prose, she works to interrogate and represent her own trans* experience in an increasingly hostile American political, cultural, environmental, and historical landscape. Kelsey’s performances penetrate the dense mess of rhetoric cultivated by political actors against trans* embodiment in order to sublimate and process difficult emotions within audiences, cis and trans* alike, with particular attention paid to the demands of trans* care.
Her post-documentary approach to photography seeks honest engagement with those central issues impacting almost all of us, as marginalizing subjects within a world increasingly designed to support the rich to the detriment of the rest. As an anarchist, polyamorist, and artist, Kelsey contributes to a radical tradition of separatism, building networks of trans* friends, allies, and lovers with whom to sustain an imperiled world. With the camera in hand, she cultivates meaningful relationships between trans* subjects and the world they occupy, imagining photography through the lens of relational aesthetics as a tool for bringing alienated subjects back into contact with the world and with each other.
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Education
2020 Image Text Ithaca, MFA
2016 Purchase College School of Art and Design, BFA
Monographs and Chapbooks
2021 The Vacuum of This Space, Baby #02, Baby Blue Ensemble, November
2019 As of Late, Set #5, Oranbeg Press, photography and text
Solo Exhibitions
2023 Paralytic States, BICA School Project Space, May 5th - 31st, 2023
Awards, Grants, and Honorable Mentions
2021 Photobook Prize, Lucie Foundation, Independent Catagory Finalist, Paralytic States
2020 Essay Press, University of Washington Bothell MFA Book Contest, Honorable Mention, Paralytic States
2019 James B. Pendleton Research and Production Grant, Ithaca College, 2019
Group Publications
2023 EXCITING PHOTOGRAPHY NOW!, Matte Magazine
2023 Soft Lightning #3, Rural Queerness
2022 Hazey #2. Fifth Wheel Press, January
2022 FWP Calendar, Fifth Wheel Press, January
2021 November Zine ////// Julie Rae Powers & Kelsey Sucena, Marble Hill Camera Club & Oranbeg Press
2021 Annus Horribilus, Float Photo Magazine, February
2021 Take the Ship Apart, Image Text Ithaca, February
2021 Hazey #1, Fifth Wheel Press
2021 Goldenrod Zine #1, Goldenrod Editions, November
2020 Urgency Reader #2, Queer.Archive.Work, April
2020 Queer Anthology of Wilderness, Pilot Press London, March
2020 Soft Lightning Volume #1, Soft Lightning, January
2019 Urgency Reader #1, Queer.Archive.Work, December
2019 Puzzazz Mag, Issue #4, Wilderness, September
2019 Queer.Archive.Work, Issue #3, Paul Soullelis, September
2019 Let us affirm our desire to keep swimming, Paul Soullelis, July
2019 Join me Now: Naan cül Press, A Portrait of the Artist Traveling Through Space, June 2019
2018 Hooligan Magazine, Issue #27, Spilled Ink
2018 Viator no. 3, Summer
2018 Hooligan Magazine, Spilled Ink, Sept
2018 Free Ass Mag. Issue #5 Flight, June 2018
2017 Pool Resources Zine, March 2017 (Before I Go)
2017 I Want You To See This Before I Leave Zine, February
2017 Free Ass. Mag. Issue #3 Nomads. Vagabonds, January
Group Exhibitions
2024 New Faculty Exhibition, Cohen Gallery, Alfred, NY
2023 Seance In Between, Mojo Supermarket, New York, NY
2022 Pained Vistas, Photo Center Northwest, Curated by Jon Feinstein and Roula Seikaly, January
2021 Homecoming, MFA Photography Review, JKC Gallery, December
2021 Pride, Plaxall Gallery, Culture Lab LIC, June
2021 Welcome Back: The Show Will Never End, The Local NY, Curated by Dana Stirling, May
2020 Best of Quarantine, Float Photo Magazine, online exhibition, June
2020 The Road, Float Photo Magazine, JKC Gallery, Trenton, NJ., February 24th - March 27th
2020 No Muevas El Arte, Galleria Hispanica, Mexico City, Mexico, February
2019 New Poetics, From Here On Out, Aviary Gallery, Boston, MA., July
2016 Saudade: A Group Exhibition, The World Money Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, December
2016 Motions: A Senior Thesis Exhibition, The Circumstances of Existence, February
2015 57th Annual Long Island Artists Exhibition, 2015
2014 Long Island Biennial Exhibition, 2014
Published Essays & Interviews
Lifelines, Essay contribution for Till We Are Full by Claudia Hermano, 2024
Scatter These Hills With Beauty, Essay for ROY G BIV gallery exhibition, Columbus Ohio, 2024
Deep Ruts, Essay contribution for Julie Rae Powers’ Monograph, 2024
Sign of Autumn, Rivalry Projects, October 2023
The Ghosts of Instagram, on Photography at the End of the World, Fifth Wheel Press
All Rights Reserved, Essay on Penelope Umbrico, Float Photo Magazine, Chromatography Issue
Strange Fire Collective, Review of To Die Alive by Matthew Liefheit
MACK Books, Good Hope, Conversation with Carla Liesching, and Pablo Lerma
Strange Fire Collective, Easy World, Interview with June T. Sanders
From Here On Out, A Fragile Trace of Things, Conversation with Deb Choudhuri
Float Photo Magazine, Interview with Mariette Pathy Allen
From Here on Out, Conversation with Marissa Iamartino
Rocket Science Magazine, Studio Visit, Chose Commune, Issue 9
Rocket Science Magazine, Day Off, Issue 8
Float Photo Magazine, Imperfect, Roslyn Julia
Float Photo Magazine, Young Americans, Marie Tomanova
Float Photo Magazine, Issue 7, Page 156-159, No Presence: On Flux and Photographic Time
Float Photo Magazine, A Place to Disappear, Pablo Lerma
Float Photo Magazine, Liars Paradox, Dane Manary
Float Photo Magazine, Even Looking at this Will Make a Difference, Dominic Till
Float Photo Magazine, Acts of Looking, Joseph Podlesnik
Book Editorial & Production Credits
What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843-1999, 10x10 Photobooks, contributing researcher & writer, 2021 Photography Catalogue of the Year (Aperture-Paris Photo), 2022 Photography Book Award (Kraszna-Krausz)
Wood River/Blue Pool, Jo Ann Walters, iTi Press
The Photobook Review, Issue 016, Spring 2019, Aperture Foundation
The Photobook Review, Issue 020, Fall 2021, Aperture Foundation
PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Sasha Wolf, Aperture Foundation
The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion, Antwaun Sargent, Aperture Foundation
An Eclipse of Moths, Gregory Crewdson, Aperture Foundation
Vik Muniz: Postcards From Nowhere, Vik Muniz, Aperture Foundation
Santa Barbara, Diana Markosian, Aperture Foundation
Matthew Porter: The Heights, Aperture Foundation
I’m Looking Through You, Tim Davis, Aperture Foundation
Press
Interview with Keavy Handley-Byrne, Strange Fire Collective
Interview with Jack Young, Lenscratch
Interview with June T. Sanders, Humble Arts Foundation
Review of Paralytic States, Marissa Iamartino, Float Photo Magazine
Speaking Engagements
2023 Catalogs of Vulnerability: On Practice and Pedagogy, Alfred University, Feb.
2023 The Ghosts of Instagram: On Photography at the End of the World, Bergren Forum, AU, Feb.
2022 Kodak Kinksters: On Fetish and Film Photography, Art in our Time, Alfred University
2022 From point A to C, on Paralytic States, Photobook class w/ John O’Toole, Syracuse University
2022 Developing your project/portfolio, Teen/Young Adult Education w/ Carla Liesching,
International Center of Photography
2022 Putting Myself in the Pictures, On the Work of Jo Spence,
“What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women", New York Public Library Reading Room
2022 Decolonizing the Camera, Conversation w/Pablo Lerma and Carla Liesching, MACK
2021 Take the Ship Apart, Launch Event, iTi class of 2020, Printed Matter’s Virtual Art Book Fair
Curation, Jury, Workshop Organization
2023 49th Annual Light Work Grants in Photography, Light Work
2022 Photocaptionist {Word + Image} Workshop, Photocaptionist
2021 Late//Refusals, Oranbeg Press, January 2021
Work Experience
The Photocaptionist - Managing Editor
Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography, Alfred University
Adjunct Professor - Purchase College, School of Art and Design
National Park Service, Fire Island National Seashore - Visual Information Specialist, Park Ranger
Aperture - Editorial Work Scholar (Books), Lesley Martin
Float Magazine - Contributing writer
The Silo Studio - Videographer, Photographer
Jo Ann Walters - Artist Assistant, Wood River/Blue Pool