Elise Kirk is a photographic artist and visual storyteller exploring personal and American mythology. Raised in mid-Missouri, Kirk studied documentary film at Columbia College Chicago (BA 2000), investigated the family in Spanish cinema on a Fulbright grant in Madrid (2000-2001), and completed her MFA in photography at the Rhode Island School of Design (2015). After fifteen years as an East Coast transplant and nonfiction television filmmaker, she is now an Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. The tableaus Kirk brings in her debut exhibit with Sager Reeves Gallery explore the dual notions of seeking and settling that underpin Midwestern life. Chance encounters and reconstructed memories live side-by-side, and images made throughout the region morph into one mythological place.
