Bio
Richard Kelly (b. 1965, New Castle, Pennsylvania)
Photographer • Educator • Filmmaker
For forty years, Richard Kelly has used photography to tell stories about people, organizations and ideas.
His life's work as a photographer is driven by curiosity—particularly about creative people, innovative organizations, media, technology and the arts. Whether working with still photography, motion or sound, people remain at the center of his work.
Kelly's career has moved between commercial and editorial photography, documentary storytelling, creative direction and education. His photographs have appeared in magazines, advertising, corporate communications, exhibitions and public collections, while his more recent work increasingly brings photography together with short-form documentary film, audio and emerging forms of visual storytelling.
From 2003–2007, Kelly served as Director of Photography for WQED and Pittsburgh Magazine. He later served as National President and Chair of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) from 2009–2011. In 2011, he received the United Nations International Photographic Council Leadership Award for his advocacy on behalf of photographers and photographers' rights.
His long-term Artists & Scientists project received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship and has been published and exhibited in numerous venues. His photographs are held in public and private collections, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Senator John Heinz History Center, the Photography Museum of Lishui, China, and other institutional collections.
Kelly has spoken about photography, creativity, technology and professional practice at conferences and organizations including SXSW, PhotoPlus Expo, WPPI, NAB, National Geographic Creative, f/295, FotoFest, Photo LA and the Rocky Mountain School of Photography.
Teaching has become an important extension of his photographic practice. After more than fifteen years teaching at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Kelly joined the BFA Photography program at Point Park University in 2019, where he continues to teach photography through a philosophy of practice over theory, curiosity, experimentation and developing each photographer's unique point of view.
He is President of Indigo Factory, Inc., the home of Richard Kelly Photography, and created the Richard Kelly Experience as a way to share photography with artists and enthusiasts beyond the traditional classroom.
Through all of these roles photographer, filmmaker, educator, creative director and advocate the underlying pursuit remains remarkably consistent: Who are you? What do you do? Why?