Kelly Rae Daugherty

Fine Art Photographer & Painter
[email protected] |  www.krdphotography.com

Artist Statement

My photographs move between street observation, portraiture, and meticulously constructed imagery. I am interested in the ways bodies, objects, light, costume, and gesture carry emotional and psychological presence, revealing the subtle forces that shape human experience. In my constructed work, I conceive and build the environments, costumes, and visual circumstances in which the photographs unfold, using staging and material transformation as extensions of the photographic image.

For more than two decades, I have worked independently in the street and studio, building a photographic archive shaped by intuition, attentiveness, and formal structure. This self-directed approach begins with self-examination—the recognition that to observe, question, and engage with the world requires an awareness of my own position within it. Through this process, I seek to remain open to the complexity and contradictions of human experience.

Studies in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo and at the San Francisco Art Institute informed an approach that balances observation with symbolic and material experimentation. Through photography, I explore perception, belief, memory, and the unseen structures that influence how we understand ourselves, one another, and the world around us.

Biography

Kelly Rae Daugherty is a contemporary fine-art photographer whose work spans staged portraiture, performance, and conceptual explorations of human presence. In her early twenties, she studied in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo with Charles Bernstein, Robert Creeley, and Irving Feldman. This immersion in language, and in the ways meaning can fracture, elide, and reveal itself, shaped a lifelong sensitivity to presence and absence.

While earning her BFA in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, Daugherty undertook a private mentorship with Henry Wessel and Bruce McGaw. She also studied with Carlos Villa. Wessel’s emphasis on developing an intuitive “picture dictionary”—a way of translating three-dimensional form, space, light, and tone into the photographic plane—continues to inform her approach to image-making.

For more than two decades, Daugherty maintained an independent studio practice in San Francisco, working across street and studio photography while building an extensive photographic archive. Beginning in 2010, her practice moved increasingly toward constructed and material forms, leading her to explore memory, myth-making, and spiritual entrapment through photography, painting, and sculpture. She lives and works in Portland, Maine.


Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

  • 2006 — BFA, Painting, San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)

    • Studied under Henry Wessel and Bruce McGaw

  • 1991–1992 — Poetics Program (Non-Degree Immersion), SUNY Buffalo

    • Studied under Charles Bernstein, Robert Creeley, and Irving Feldman

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

  • 2026 — Guest Room: A Little Bit of Magic, Der Greif (Global Institutional Showcase)

    • Curated by Shana Lopes (Assistant Curator of Photography, SFMOMA) & Aspen Mays

  • 2026 — LANDSCAPES, Praxis Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (Curated Exhibition)

  • 2025 — Ghosts, Goblins & Other Apparitions, Part 2, Lenscratch ( Juried Group Exhibition)

  • 2025 — Botanicals: Flora of the World, Decagon Gallery (Juried Group Exhibition)

  • 2025 — Oracle’s Grove, Deering Oaks, Portland, ME (Online Conceptual Project)

  • 2010–2011 — San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA

  • 2009 — Gregg Deane Gallery, Palo Alto, CA

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY & FEATURES

  • 2026 — Shots Magazine

  • 2025 — Dear Dave —Instagram feature

  • 2024 — The Café Review

  • 2024 — Model Society

  • 2011 — PH Magazine (December Issue)

  • 2011 — Sinescope Magazine (November Issue)

  • 2010 — Disenthralled Magazine (June Issue)

  • 2009 — CIRCUMFLEKS Magazine (May Issue)

  • Additional features: Photography Served, W5RAN

LECTURES & PRESENTATIONS

  • 2024 — Women in Street Photography, Hunt’s Photo Education

    • Guest lecture and live masterclass on emotional presence and authenticity in contemporary street practice.

COLLECTIONS & REPRESENTATION

  • Works held in private collections across the United States and Europe via SFMOMA Artists Gallery placements.

  • 2017–2018 — Gallery Representation: Gault Gallery, OR (Painting division)

STUDIO PRACTICE

  • Maintains an active, independent archive of over 50,000 photographs spanning conceptual portraiture, self-portraiture, un-staged street documentary, and botanical studies (2003–present).

  • Rejects software-driven composite manipulation; utilizes a strict analog-style methodology focused on raw in-camera exposure, custom color grading, hand-executed dodging, and burning.

  • Maintains a parallel multidisciplinary practice in large-scale abstract painting and symbolic sculpture.

An artist lying on the floor of their art studio, with hands raised and fingers spread, facing the camera. The studio has various art supplies, chairs, and canvases, with a large abstract painting on an easel in the background, a red chair, and a bright orange canvas on the floor.