Kelli Pennington LIMINAL

In a time just before the proliferation of selfi es, Kelli Pennington picked up her camera and decided to start taking photographs of herself, her family, her partner and the world around her. It was 2003, and she had just graduated from Towson University with a major in fine-art photography. “I bought a one-way ticket and moved to Albuquerque,” she said. As a personal project, “I decided to shoot myself for a year.” She believed that the way one frames a photograph is meaningful beyond aesthetics. “What we choose to exclude or include in the frame tells us a lot about what we choose to focus on in life.”

She named the project, which is ongoing, “Liminal.” “Liminal means you’re always on the threshold to the next thing,” she says. “It’s the space of what’s to come. It’s the now.” The year ended, but Pennington continued to photograph her life using whatever kind of camera she had on hand. During that time, she received her MFA from Syracuse University and began teaching photography as an adjunct professor at a community college in Portland, Oregon. Today, there are 50 images in the series, but it is still not finished; one day, she hopes to publish them in a book and exhibit them in large-format prints.

In 2018, it’s common to take daily images of one’s own life. What’s not common is the meditative, ecstatic state captured in “Liminal”; looking at the work feels like stepping outside in a dark mood, and being reminded of how lucky you are to be alive. “I think they are this kind of distillation of the quest for the sublime in your own life,” she says.

—Brienne Walsh

Photos © Kelli Pennington kellipennington.com