Candace Keller

Biography

Candace M. Keller earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of the History of Art at Indiana University, where she majored in African art and minored in African Studies and African American art. Her work is driven by a commitment to intellectual and cultural diversity. She strives to bring African cultural practices and theoretical perspectives to the conceptual awareness of global audiences, emphasizing their critical value within our increasingly interconnected, transcultural world. With a specific focus on vernacular art and photography, her work centers on the power of representation. She investigates the ways in which cultural knowledge and markers of social identity are constructed, perpetuated, and contested via visual language systems. In this vein, she considers how individuals—artists, patrons, and audiences—ascribe meaning to images as they traverse cultural contexts, cultivating a sense of social belonging, individuality, or exclusivity, to appreciate how local means of visual expression can have far reaching significance for global citizens. Her research and courses center on issues of identity, personhood, and complex agency, as well as processes of transculturation, globalization, nationalism, and postcolonialism.

Dr. Keller is Director of the Archive of Malian Photography and Associate Director of Matrix: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research on the histories of photography in Mali, West Africa, has appeared in several publications, invited lectures, and conference presentations, and has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the British Library. Her book, Imaging Culture: Photography in Mali, West Africa was published by Indiana University Press in 2021.