Utilizing photographs both made and found, Trim Tab explores the speed in which ideologies are imposed on and shift the context of human invention. By collecting over a thousand photographs of geodesic domes – ranging from the mid century utopian architectural movements which popularized them, mundane real estate listings, Burning Man structures, “glamping” culture, children’s playgrounds, the architecture of surveillance, and our dreams for settlement on planets beyond our own – Johnson seeks to critically map a structure through time, disparate photographic intentions, and the human imagination.

Kelsey Halliday Johnson is an artist, writer, and curator living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Exploring the nature of human perception and communication, Kelsey’s personal work continues to excavate our evolving understanding of the verisimilitude of lens-based media and our mediated relationship to the landscape. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Berman Museum of Art, the Delaware Art Museum, and the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University. Presently, she is the inaugural Curatorial Fellow in Photography and New Media at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown. Her recent research has been supported by a Pew Center for Arts & Heritage project grant to help realize an exhibition and publication project surveying female artists exploring new media in the 1970s alongside the legacy of women in technology.

Press:
Artblog: Utopian Dreams – Kelsey Halliday Johnson at Vox Populi

Above: John Sinkankas’ Brazilian tourmalinated quartz sample, date unknown
Below: From page 88 of R. Buckminster Fuller’s Earth Inc., 1947