Ariel Kessler has exhibited her work in many parts of the United States, and internationally in Mexico and Japan. Her work is a part of private and public collections all over the world.
She was a finalist for Photographer’s Forum Best of College Photography in 2010 and has received honorable mention for Women in Photography International in 2009 for her self-portrait series NY Self. Ariel Kessler was also the October Artist of the Month for Colortek Boston in 2012. She was a featured artist on 3200K in 2013.
At a young age Ariel developed a fondness for photography, building her first darkroom at twelve years old. Using her late father’s Nikon F, she took photographs wherever she went. At eighteen, she moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts. There she became enraptured with small camera, street-like photography. After two years of focusing on this style, she moved back to her hometown of Boston to attend the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she was mentored by some of the masters of the view camera and was given the opportunity to work with the Polaroid 20×24 camera. She graduated with her BFA in 2010.
Ariel's work has been featured in numerous publications, including a limited edition hand-bound book of her series Hour of Lead by John Steck Jr. of the Make Book Blog.
In 2013, she began Defend The Darkroom, an online community of over 1,400 followers.
Today Ariel lives and works on her photography and collages in Watertown, Massachusetts.
