best kept secrets: A Photography Exhibit by Eli Kurs-Lasky

best kept secrets is a photography collection by Eli Kurs-Lasky.

Eli Kurs-Lasky, an Autistic and artistic 30-something, is a writer and self-taught photographer. He was born, raised, and continues to live in Pittsburgh. He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and in January 2025, he joined the Pittsburgh Adult Autism Research Community Collaborative Advisory Board (PAARCC), where he collaborates with others to advance Autism research. Eli has also been involved with numerous projects for Evolve Coaching, in which he has helped to bolster accessibility through creating and editing both closed captions and audio descriptions.

Eli has always considered himself an artist but has indulged his creative side even more since coming to terms with being Autistic. Art gives Eli a way to make sense of an otherwise chaotic and overstimulating world. Eli will put on his headphones, play music, and explore the city, taking photos of whatever catches his eye. Often, Eli doesn't have a specific destination in mind, he just goes wherever his feet (and his camera) lead him.

best kept secrets is Eli's first-ever solo art show. When creating a concept for this show, Eli meticulously sifted through his seemingly endless archive of photos, looking for the common threads that pull his art together. As someone who finds inspiration in a wide variety of sources and subjects, this proved to be a difficult task until he came back to a sentence he wrote in an essay published in the summer of 2025 - "My hope is that my work encourages people to look twice at things they otherwise don't even notice once." From that, Eli worked backwards, realizing that what catches his eye are the things that others don't see or seem to notice. The title "best kept secrets" is a nod to those things, and all the nooks and crannies Eli finds while out exploring. He is constantly chasing the feeling of satisfaction that comes with making the mundane magical and capturing new views of old places.

This art show is presented in collaboration with Evolve Coaching.

25% of each sale benefits the Sharpsburg Community Library.

best kept secrets will be on view daily through Saturday 6/27.

Join Eli for a Closing Reception on Saturday 6/27, 12pm-1pm. Light refreshments served.

Find Eli on Instagram: @stillcityphotography