A newly discovered trove of her kaleidoscopic works reveals that the enigmatic artist captured the zeitgeist of 1960s Southern California.

The story of the late photographer Kali is one of mystique, secrecy, and ubiquitous allure.

C’est une course aux trésors  commencée dans la Californie des sixties  et qui n’est pas près de s’achever.  C’est l’aventure d’une femme, Kali,  née en 1932, qui a tout quitté par passion,  et de son œuvre longtemps tenue secrète.  Deux expositions aux Etats-Unis et un coffret de quatre volumes publié  chez powerHouse, présentant les créations fantasmagoriques et éclectiques  de cette ancienne mère au foyer, tentent  aujourd’hui de démêler les fils de sa vie. par Oanell Terrier

“The best photographers, the best artists do it alone.” -Kali Archibald 

Filmmaker and writer Matt Tyrnauer discusses the mythology behind the discovery of great art, and how Kali could come to be the next Vivian Maier.

A massive new four-volume book makes the case for Joan Archibald, a California party girl turned lawyer’s wife who developed prints in her swimming pool, as a major visual artist.

The new four-volume book KALI Ltd. Ed. chronicles Joan Archibald’s transformation from Long Island housewife to elusive artist.

The release of a four-volume collection about the late, little known artist Kali coincides with an exhibit of her work at Staley-Wise Gallery in New York City.

The colors in many of Kali’s images seem to shimmer, as if pulsing with their own internal heartbeat.

Raised in Long Island, New York, Joan Marie Archibald (b. 1932) shed the garb of a thirty-year-old all-American housewife––wed then divorced with children––and headed to Los Angeles to don that of “Kali,” an artographer creating visions of psychedelia. Staley-Wise Gallery’s KALI is the late artist’s first major exhibition. It comprises a collection of largely unseen works, the discovery of which incidentally began by her daughter, Susan Oddo, and former son-in-law, photographer Len Prince, in 2017 while assisting Kali’s move into a nursing home, and which continued posthumously after her death following her battle with Parkinson’s in 2019. 

Staley-Wise Gallery is pleased to present the first major exhibition by KALI. The exhibition includes vintage photo-based artwork and original Polaroid prints. The majority of this work has never been seen publicly before.

Flooded with swirling, multilayered psychedelic hues, Kali’s portraits, often of wide-eyed young women, can feel like the ultimate distillation of an expansive, naïve and chaotic place and time. Despite her innovative techniques, her work has remained almost entirely unknown, but can now be seen in a new volume, “Kali".

The photos of Joan Archibald—or Kali, as she styled herself in about 1964— evoke a deep feeling, or better yet, realization of Los Angeles, or greater Los Angeles. The photos in these volumes, for the most part, came from a similar, timelessly picturesque canyon; they were developed in makeshift darkrooms. Those that didn’t come from the garage darkroom in the nearby canyon, came from the desert, developed in a master bath darkroom in Palm Springs, to be specific.

The story begins in 1964. A Long Island housewife named Joan Archibald loads up her old Studebaker and takes off for the West Coast, leaving behind two children and a soon-to-be ex-husband, never to return. She ends up in Malibu, where for a time she lives out of her car, and she soon falls in with the Hollywood hippie crowd, becoming best friends with the actor Richard Chamberlain, deflecting advances from Frank Sinatra, and taking up photography—Southern California providing a revolving door of beautiful young muses. She also changes her name to Kali Archibald.