Celebration and a Chair

A black and white photograph of a man and woman standing on either side of a lawn chair. Their bodies and movement are blurred from the long-exposure of the image.

K. Kelly Wise was born in 1932 in New Castle, Indiana. He is a photographer, teacher, and author who works in Andover, United States.

K. Kelly Wise was mainly an English teacher who received an MA degree in Contemporary Literature from Columbia University, New York City, in 1959, and a BS degree in Creative Writing from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, in 1955. He has been an instructor of English since 1966 at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and chairman of the English Department there since 1978; he also served as residential dean at the academy from 1969 to 1973. Prior to that he taught English at Mount Hermon School (1960-66).

He maintained a diverse career while teaching, launching a career as an artist and photographer, writing about photography as a critic for The Boston Globe, and editing books on photography. As he was teaching, however, he felt that the faces he saw in academia were not diverse enough—so when he stepped down as dean of faculty in 1990, he founded and became the executive director of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT) at Phillips Academy.

Some of his publications include: Still Points, 1975; Lotte lacobi, 1975; Private Realities, 1974. Anthology: The Photographer’s Choice, ed., 1975. Periodical: Creative Camera, Jan 1977.