KALI

Kali was an American outsider photographer now recognized for her lush psychedelic portraits and her later documentation of extraterrestrial sightings. She was born Joan Archibald in Long Island, New York in 1932. When she turned 30, Archibald hit the road, leaving behind her children and an ex-husband to pursue a new life in photography. She took on the name “Kali,” settled down in Palm Springs, and began to develop her unique darkroom practice with assistance from her daughter, Susan. Surrounded by the subcultures of Los Angeles in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Kali had an experimental photographic method where she would mix in dyes and dirt in her swimming pool where she developed her photographs and dried the prints in the sun.

A natural continuation of her exploration into light and multiple exposures, later in life Kali began documenting the mysterious orbs and light leaks caught on the extraordinary Closed Circuit TV security system of her Pacific Palisades home. Believing these lights to be crafts and sinister beings from another world, she obsessively photographed the monitors, as well as made notes and drawings of the nocturnal events she witnessed overnight. Kali captured various lights, shapes and human-like forms and for over three years she did not leave her house due to the fear these uninvited nightly visitors brought upon her. These later works went unseen until they were rediscovered by Susan and her ex-husband, photographer Len Prince, after Kali’s death in 2019.

Kali was a prolific photographer and a pioneer in experimental photography. While her early works found some initial praise, there is a newfound interest in her photography career as a whole after her life's work was organized and archived posthumously; most of the works now in the collection at Emory University. Kali has a forthcoming retrospective at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, gallery exhibition, and publication coming in 2022.