Kali (Joan Archibald)

Kali (born Joan Archibald in 1938) is an American photographer whose daring experimental techniques and enigmatic life story have only recently come to light. A suburban Long Island housewife and mother of two, she vanished from her family in 1966 and reemerged in Malibu under the name “Kali,” living out of her car and documenting the vibrant counterculture around her—from surfers and hippies to occasional celebrity sightings.

By 1967 she relocated to Palm Springs, taking up residence in a Spanish‑style home once owned by Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee. There, Kali converted her swimming pool into a vast finishing tank: after developing prints in her bathtub, she drenched them in dyes, insects, paint, and debris, wading through the water to coax each photograph into a unique, unpredictable colorization. Her daughter Susan retrieved the works from the deck, then stashed them away—unseen for decades.

In later years Kali withdrew into her estate, obsessively filming the night‑vision feeds of her closed‑circuit TV system and sketching the uncanny “visitors” she believed were watching her. Only after she was hospitalized with dementia did her family discover locked cabinets containing over a thousand of her handmade prints. Her archive—now being catalogued by her ex‑husband, photographer Len Prince—reveals a singular artistic voice: one that fused analog photography with performance, chemical alchemy, and a fearless embrace of chance, creating images that hover between the domestic and the surreal.