Casey Kelbaugh, Untitled, photograph

American, b. 1974, playing from New York City, NY, USA

Casey Kelbaugh is a NYC-based photographer and the founder of Slideluck. He works primarily as an editorial and commercial photographer for a variety of clients including The New York Times, T Magazine, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Mashable, Creative Time, MoMA PS1, The Art Production Fund, The Standard Hotels, NYU, etc. More of Casey Kelbaugh’s photography, press, bio and clients can be found here.

In 2000, Kelbaugh founded Slideluck in his Seattle backyard by combining a slideshow with a potluck dinner for a group of about 50 creatives from various disciplines. Slideluck is now a non-profit organization dedicated to building and strengthening community through food and art. The artwork of over 10,000 artists has been presented at events in roughly 100 cities globally. In 2010, Slideluck broke the Guinness World Record for the Largest Potluck on Earth in Brooklyn, NY, with over 1,000 guests and 479 dishes. The Slideluck Youth Initiative teaches photography and multimedia storytelling to kids in Harlem, East New York, the Bronx and East Los Angeles. Slideluck has collaborated with numerous other museums, galleries, organizations, institutions and initiatives the world over. In 2014, the Slideluck London team published a photo cookbook, entitled “Hungry Still,” which is now being carried in the Tate Modern among other places. More info, press, images, slideshows, and recipes can be found here.

Thoughts on the Telephone process

Five years ago, I was handed a one–page poem by Bob Holman and was asked to interpret it photographically. I believe I was the fourth link in the Telephone chain, but of that I’m not even sure – the only thing I know for certain is that I spent a month wrestling with this poem. Poetry has never been a medium that came easy to me and this piece was no exception. I was traveling a lot at the time and I dragged the project with me, struggling to find the right visual tools to express the way it made me feel and the imagery it conjured up within me. It wasn’t until the eleventh hour - in the middle of the high plains outside of Santa Fe at 2:00am on an extremely cold winter’s night - that it crystalized for me. It was with two figures arranged atop the cab of my pickup truck and the Sangre de Christo Mountains silhouetted by the lights of Las Vegas beyond that I made peace with this poem.

I am fascinated to see where the thread leads from here! This was certainly one of the most pure and exciting explorations of the creative process in which I have ever taken part.