Forest Kelley

Forest Kelley is an artist and experimental composer working across photography, installation, sound, and code. Channeling documentary impulses, his work is an effort to comprehend events dislocated from public view, lost to the past, or shaped by oral history and mythmaking. His work harnesses innovative techniques to illuminate vital stories. 

Kelley has exhibited internationally at venues including 1708 Gallery (Richmond, VA), ClampArt (New York, NY), Filter Space (Chicago, IL), Glassell Gallery, Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge, LA), HyCP Veddel Space (Hamburg, Germany), Rotterdam Photo (Rotterdam, Netherlands), SF Camerawork (San Francisco, CA), and Zou-no-hana Terrace (Yokohama, Japan). His video work has screened at venues including Audio Foundation (Auckland, New Zealand), Harvard Graduate School of Design (Cambridge, MA), Pier2 Art Center (Kaohsiung, Taiwan), and WEP (Groningen, Netherlands). 

In 2022, he released the full-length experimental album Silt on the label ENXPL (Enmossed + Psychic Liberation). He received the 2020 Imagemaker Award from the Society for Photographic Education. In 2018, he contributed music to the Academy Award–nominated and Criterion Collection–selected documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, for which he was recognized among the recipients of a Peabody Award and the International Documentary Association Award for Best Music Score. In recent years, he has worked closely with international artist networks such as Hyper Cultural Passengers, Port Futures and Social Logistics, and the Port Journeys network.

Kelley received a BA in Social Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. He was formerly the Post-MFA Photography Fellow at the University of Georgia.