Baton Rouge artist redefines the meaning of ‘self-portrait’

Much of art is about transporting the viewer to another time and place. For local artist and LSU photography instructor Kelly Tate, the first person to transport is herself.

If Tate’s work simply seems like snapshots of everyday life—strangers avoiding eye contact on the train, a waitress eying a customer, friends arguing by a campfire—look a little closer. Tate builds tiny, meticulously detailed models of outdoor scenes or interior rooms like diners, campgrounds, motel rooms and subway cars and uses photo manipulation to step inside the story.

Her miniature worlds are digitally filled with photos of herself in a variety of costumes and characters, sometimes with several versions of Tate playing opposite one another in a single frame. The result challenges social and spatial sensibilities alike.

“I’m inspired by a lot of films and visual representations of role playing,” Tate says. “I’ll come up with some sort of idea, a social scenario that I’m interested in or experienced, or I’ll think of some kind of interior that I want to recreate and create a story inside of. Usually it starts with creating the setting, and then I just daydream about it a little bit.”

Creating this story for a typical piece can take weeks of planning and handcrafting a complete scene. The depth of Tate’s work lies in the careful details, like a miniature glass of whiskey on a nightstand or a wallpaper pattern, each making the scene more real for viewers.

“The best I can really hope for is to have people think about the fluidity of personality and identity. All of the figures are me, of course, so it’s all sort of self-portraiture in a way,” Tate says. “It’s thinking about the idea that we can be in any room we choose. We can be in any position, and frequently we find ourselves in positions we didn’t expect.”

ONLINE:
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