A black and white photograph of an old man standing in dark water. His face is not visible and his arms are outstretched to the width of the print.

K. Kelly Wise was born in 1932 in New Castle, Indiana. He 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 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.