Elise Kirk is a photographic artist, visual storyteller and Assistant Professor of Photo Media at the University of Kansas. She completed her MFA in photography at Rhode Island School of Design (’15), investigated representations of the family in Spanish cinema on a Fulbright grant in Madrid (’01), and studied documentary film at Columbia College Chicago (BA ’00).
Elise is from the Midwest, though she can’t quite tell you what qualities make her a Midwesterner, or even where the borders of the Midwest lie. She is based in Lawrence, Kansas and on the road, where she also produces nonfiction television stories when she’s not making pictures. Her personal work gravitates towards familial connections (inherited and constructed), mythologies of place, liminal states, and the impermanence of all of the above.