I am captivated by the documentary and conceptual aspects of photography and am interested in exploring the medium’s ability to contain both factual and manipulated information simultaneously. I photograph in a range of environments but am consistently drawn to the street and to communities in flux. I use re-photography, the deliberate photographing and re-photographing of the same locations over years, as a way to confront the destructive aspects of displacement - by revisiting locations over time, small yet significant transitions and erasures reveal themselves. An archive of sorts is being built, but the main focus is on the present and what is out there in any given day.

Recently I have been experimenting with a different type of “field recording” - direct-print processes like cyanotype and anthotype (vegetable/plant based emulsions) made in the street. Both processes rely on available light and water, and can be made on the sidewalk, lending an unpredictable energy to the scenes.

new orleans

Lely Constantinople

Lely Constantinople is an artist, archivist/photo editor, and educator from Washington, D.C. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally for over thirty years and her photographs are held in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution as well as numerous private collections. She has edited/curated several books and traveling exhibitions including Hard Art DC 1979, photographs of the early DC punk scene and SHOTS: An American Photographer's Journal 1967-72 by David Fenton/Liberation News Service of the late 1960s counterculture.

She was recently awarded a 2024 Artist Fellowship Grant from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and is working on publishing a series of handmade books. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C.