GB
I just want to say, Kennedi, that I’m super excited to meet you and talk with you today. I was of course looking online at your editorial work. And it’s been a really busy time for you the last couple of years so I wanted to start just by asking you how you’re feeling. How are you doing generally?
KC
I’m doing pretty well—and also I’m excited to talk to you too, I forgot to say that—but I am doing pretty well. I’m not necessarily phasing out of the editorial side of things, but I don’t know, I’m just kind of slowly realizing where my priorities are and what it is that I want to do and where I want my work to live. So I think it’s been an exciting two years—maybe, almost, I think it’s close to 2 years—but I think it’s put into perspective where it is that I want to be and what I want to do.
GB
So when you say that, are you thinking about rebalancing your fine art or personal work versus your editorial work?
KC
Yeah, and just finding different ways to fund it. There’s just always so many things that I want to do but, I don’t know, I feel like a hamster trapped on a wheel because you need money and then you fund it through the work that you’re doing and then you have no time to actually do the work that you want to do because you’re so busy trying to fund the other work and then you have to fund having a roof over your head and living and all these other things. So I think since I’m a young adult now, I’m trying to figure out how to be an artist but also how to adult as well.
GB
So I would like to just chime in as an adult who’s got decades on you and say that that’s a journey and I’m currently in the same one where I do love art, but I’m a dentist, that’s my other hat. And that’s the hat that pays the bills. And I’m at the point now, to your very point, where you’re trying to balance these other interests that I have, namely art, art curating, sharing art, bringing art into the community, but the work that I do that pays the bills has to take that priority and so I find that year over year I’m thinking about how I pivot, that’s the word of the COVID pandemic I suppose, but how I pivot to something that brings me joy and still pay the bills. And here I am in my late 40s still thinking about it. So be easy. Let’s talk about some of this editorial work, just because it’s been amazing. And speaking of the pandemic, it also seems that a lot of this uptick in both your editorial and fine arts practice has happened from 2020 through now. And I’m thinking mainly of your British Vogue cover with Beyonce that was in 2020, cover with Lakeith Stanfield for Entertainment Weekly, Simone Biles, and also your first solo exhibition at CAM Raleigh and I believe that opened in 2020 as well. So take us through that. How did all of this explosion of both editorial and fine art opportunities happen for you?
KC
I remember my collaboration with CAM Raleigh had started late 2019, so that show had been in the works and had been planned for a good chunk of time, and then it’s just been up ever since because of COVID, but as for my commercial and editorial work, I feel like the year of the pandemic really set the tone for myself but also just a lot of Black editorial and commercial artists. Part of it being a combination of the pandemic but also protests that were going on and people were more intentional about hiring Black artists, especially in the commercial and editorial world. During that time period, I took advantage of that, but also took advantage of the fact that I took advantage of the fact that I could make the work from Durham and didn’t have to leave and I had more opportunities to show my work remotely rather than having to leave, and so that’s what got more eyes on me when it came to editors and people that are making the decisions behind the scenes in regards to who is going to take the picture that you see in a magazine or in a digital article, so I feel like it was the perfect storm. I think the people that needed to find out about my work found out about it at the right time.
GB
Yeah, and I think that part of it has to be just the nature of the images that you make. So when you talk about this time of protest and social unrest and interest, I do see, in particular your personal or fine arts work, a real intimate nature, a real exploration of the subject and the Black body. For example, there seem to be a lot of questions that you’re asking in particular, that intimacy. And I wanted to know if you could talk to us a little bit or talk to me a little bit about how you choose who you are taking photos of and if there’s a theme, how you come about that and think about that.
KC
I think in terms of just the sitters, I try to choose people that feel familiar but also have this level of weirdness or a strangeness and kookiness to them that I just love so much. I think an artist that I really admired that is good at doing this is Deanna Lawson but also an older photographer Diane Arbus—I feel like those are two photographers that their casting was just so authentic to the point that it became a bit weird and almost felt as though you’re gazing into a movie of some sort. These people feel familiar, but also they don’t in a way, and so I think when I am casting or figuring out who it is that I want to take a photo of, I always search for that, because I don’t want there to feel as though there’s like an overfamiliarity that I have, but I also want to find people that are just super interesting and I’ll just go about different ways of finding people that I do find interesting. Some people I’ll find on TikTok and reach out to and they’ll randomly just come across my little feed and I’ll reach out to them and then I’ll go and shoot with them just because I thought they looked Interesting. I don’t know, it’s a very subjective thing, and I don’t even think I know what I find to be alluring in a sitter, but it’s just like something in my brain clicks.
GB
So it’s interesting too that you mentioned the other photographers that you admire because I do see some similarities. But I was also struck by that “cinematic,” when you talk about looking at a movie, thinking particularly about that “Pin Ups // XXX” personal series that you have, once again, just how intimate it feels, but that cinematic quality of them. The backgrounds, for example, the shadows. I was struck by that and it’s interesting to me to hear that you might not know the sitter, because I do feel that they are so vulnerable and open to you that there’s so much trust between you and the sitter that you had to know them and if you don’t, can you talk to us about how you build that connection so that your sitters feel as comfortable as they seem to be in front of your camera.
KC
I’m always just straightforward about what it is that I’m looking to do. If I’m looking to take something that’s just more nude or feels a bit more risqué and open, I’m honest about that and I always let them know that we can stop whenever you want to. But also, I don’t try to rush the experience. There have been some shoots, I think in that particular series, where I had been with the sitter for hours or all the way into the middle of the night and by then, I’ve gotten the best picture because I’ve chatted with them and we’ve hung out and chatted about everything under the sun. I think a lot of what you’re seeing is a level of earned intimacy and also me returning to these people if I feel like I need to redo something or get something right or do something better. I think I start out not knowing some of the people that I’m taking the photos of, but I try to revisit them and maintain a connection so I can get a photograph that feels the most raw and honest.
GB
Maybe we can step back a little bit and you can take us through how you got to photography. I did read a little bit online about how you started there, but if you could take us through how you got here, taking these amazing photos.
KC
I went to Jordan High School, and it’s I think one of the two high schools in Durham that actually had a dark room, and I knew I wanted to do photography mainly because I thought it was easy. It was not easy—my teacher made sure of that. And I had to do a lot of research on photographers and work that was contemporary, but also work that was done right at the beginning of when photography was made. I had to do a lot of that, a lot of research, and she just was always giving us various projects to do. I kind of figured, okay, this is something that I’m good at; I had always tried different things in the arts realm. I had tried painting, but I was just terrible at that. I tried drawing. It’s just something that is so strange to me about projecting what is on your brain through your hands through a pencil onto a piece of paper. It just wasn’t in the cards for me. I felt like photography was one of those mediums that felt the most honest, since it’s coming from a direct rendering of life. That’s what I was looking for when I would try to draw, but just couldn’t get. I think that’s why I was drawn to photography in particular. And so when I graduated. I did a two year stint at UNC Greensboro and then I was like okay, this is not it, I’m ready to go, and I left [LAUGHS]. And then the pandemic happened and stuff just started falling into place. But over that time, I was just continuing to make the work that I wanted to make.
GB
You were also on the Nasher Teen Council when you were in high school. How was that experience for you?
KC
It was really fun. I remember we would just go and do different things and then it was just another place to do or make projects and experience building a project from start to finish—actually feeling what the end or tail-end of a project feels like. Sometimes I feel as though I’m aimlessly making just a bunch of work and then it’s gonna be never ending. Like what is the end goal of this project? But I think that’s what Nasher teens taught me, it taught me how to bring a project to a close and what that looks like and feels like.
GB
And so from a Nasher teen council member now you’re a featured artist in the Nasher’s current exhibition which is called Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now and that current exhibition is on view at the Nasher through July of 2022. You have three works that are part of that exhibition from your series called Riding Sucka Free. There are three images, as I mentioned, and these photos were taken outdoors and they depict what looks to me like young Black people on horses, on a horse farm, in maybe the summer or spring, they are taken outdoors, it looks really warm, a lot of sunlight and they’re in various states of being on the horse or tending to the horse. And so I’m wondering what got you interested in equestrians, considering that you know your editorial work is fashion, high fashion, and then here we have this series of outdoor, more daily rural life. So can you tell us about that?
KC
Yeah, so my maternal grandparents, they’re from Texas, and we would always go down there, for a short period of time we lived down there, and during that time when I was a kid, there were always horsemen around, they would ride up and down the highways and they were always Black. I found the fact that contemporary Americana often portrays the cowboy as this white person, and so I thought it’d be interesting to go to these different trail rides that happened while I was in town visiting my grandma. I feel I’ve always found trail rides to be interesting because they’re just like parties but outside. People are always dancing, there’s good food. I’ve even had cousins that were made at trail rides. So I figured that would be the best place to just start off this project, because I knew that I wanted to do it. And I started with going to different trail rides when I was in Houston and Dallas and then I expanded into Philadelphia and shot with the concrete cowboys out there. Where else have I gone? New Orleans, that’s another place that I frequented to shoot. And then I was also making some images in Durham and Siler City and last year I think I went to Oregon, Bend, Oregon, to shoot with a Black woman out there. Her name is Esperanza and she does various equestrian things. But it’s less the Westernized, super wild, imma ride a horse and do it now, hers is just more structured, not Kentucky Derby, but like when the horses just come out and trot. She teaches her horses how to trot and do cute stuff like that. So I was just wanting to overall delve into what the Black equestrian experience is in a more contemporary sense and keep just looking into that. I do do a lot of editorial and commercial stuff, but it’s really just so I can pay my bills. I was doing all the other stuff that I wanted to do prior to that.
GB
When you talk about this contemporary Black equestrian experience, one image comes to mind, and that is the one where there’s a person standing behind the horse and he has these fashionable distressed jeans with a Gucci belt and a tank top on there, but then he’s wearing very practical, clumsy looking to me, galoshes. And so I was really interested in that juxtaposition of the practical and the fly at the same time. So I’m curious to know, how much direction do you give your subjects or your sitters, posing them, dressing them, how deep into that do you go?
KC
Typically it’s just to come as you are type thing and in that particular image, I remember I was actually about to leave and Silas had ended up coming right when I was about to leave. And I saw his Gucci belt and I was like, oh yeah, this is great, because it seems like it would make no sense, especially when you think of cowboys you think of that huge belt buckle but then you have like a Gucci belt. He just came as he was and then I had him just stand and pose for a portrait. I think typically when a lot of people get their portrait taken. They think that they have to showcase a boisterous persona through their pose through these larger than life things that they could do with their bodies. But I was like, no, let’s just reel it in and do something that’s very simple and clean and classic. But he was really open to it and I think that’s just what I wanted to go for.
GB
One of the other images has a young person who is on top of the horse in a pretty acrobatic pose. No saddle and she just seems to be perched on there, maybe about to jump on or jump off, and that to me spoke to a lot of freedom but also skill in such a young person I’m thinking about that idea of riding a horse, the freedom that is in riding a horse, and I thought it was just really amazing how you were able to depict that freedom in that particular image. Are you thinking about bigger concepts, too, about freedom and representation in your work when you’re making it?
KC
Cowboys or just equestrians as a whole, Black equestrians as a whole, represent this level of freedom that a lot of people don’t have access to when they cut off various types of agriculture from their lives. I think that what I witness with them is this freedom and overall oneness with nature that I find to be particularly interesting, but also just a level of sentient aliveness, there’s nothing that seems to bring them more peace and happiness than being on a horse, especially after a long and hard day. But also, it’s a distraction from the things that happen to you within your daily life as a Black person, and I think that’s—in the conversations that I’ve had with them—that’s often what I walk away with, because no one has to ride a horse anymore. There’s cars, there’s other forms of transportation. It’s purely by choice and because it makes them feel good, and I think that everyone should search for something that makes them feel as alive as they feel when they’re on a horse.
GB
When you talk about everyone you know having or needing or should be seeking this outlet for freedom, where do you find that in your life or in your practice?
KC
I find it through making pictures, nothing brings me more happiness than when I’ve made a picture that I’m like, “mmm, this is the one right here.” And I feel like everybody knows it, but you get that boost of serotonin every time or at least every time I make an image that I feel like is just going to, as I like to say, “stick like grits.” It just seems like an image that I will bring with me for a long time and just one that will be a part of my visual legacy. I think also when I find people that embody that sense of aliveness and happiness that I look for, I think that’s also such a rare thing that when I do find that, I try to circle back to it as consistently as I can, whether the person rides horses or is an oyster farmer. Part of my happiness is finding people and documenting people and also talking to them and getting their histories and their stories, because sometimes I feel like a lot of our stories just die with us.
GB
I like this idea of a visual legacy as well. Do you think deeply about that? Is that also something that you’re considering as you’re choosing sitters or subjects or even does it influence your editorial work? I know that there’s a pressure to pay bills and so sometimes that means you just keep saying yes, but if you have this idea of what is my visual legacy, does that allow you to be more discerning about the assignments that you take and accept?
KC
I think it allows me to be discerning about what it is that I accept but it also it’s made me more hypercritical of the work that I’m making, because sometimes everything just feels not good enough. I think especially with the shininess of editorial and commercial, folks think that, oh this is an amazing thing that you’re doing, when honestly most days I’m not even moved by it and I feel like I’m just clicking a shutter and I have all these other people in my ear telling me how I need to construct a picture rather than me going out and just doing it myself. Often I think editorial and my commercial work often makes me minimize or shrink a lot of what I do, because I’m not going out and directly putting into the world my voice, it’s always with the influence of someone else. So I look forward to when I can become even more discerning about what it is that I take on and even more picky, that’s what I look forward to, because right now I feel like I know that long term this is not where I want to be, and that there are other things that I want to do, and that my visual legacy is bigger than an editorial and commercial assignment, it’s the stuff that I actually want to be doing.
GB
So what are you thinking about next? What’s on your mind in terms of your personal journey or your personal work, things that you want to explore?
KC
Within a month or so, I’m about to go on maternity leave, so I’ll be having a baby soon and I’m wanting to make a lot of work that’s centered around him, centered around my own experience as a mother, but also the matriarchal Black figures that I have in my family and the stories that they have and actually sitting down and transcribing interviews with them, because I do think that parenthood as a whole is heavily influenced by not only how we were parented, but the stories and the things that our families went through. So I’m wanting to take a deeper dive into that and into just motherhood as a whole, or Black maternity imagery as a whole, and look into that. And I’m also doing a lot of collecting of Black pinup imagery and negatives from the 60s and in the 50s, so wanting to eventually do something with that. I feel like my brain is all over the place but stuff is slowly coming together as I’m forcing myself to sit down and write my thoughts out and figure out what it is that I would like to do.
GB
It sounds like the direction at least for now is almost like a photo documentary type of archiving almost…so I’m looking forward to that. And let me also say congratulations to you. Are you still based in Durham? You think it’s still your home for you for now?
KC
Yeah, so I’m still based here. I think I’ll be based here for a while. My parents are down here, so I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon.
GB
Yeah, that was a question I had, just because of all these exotic locations that your editorial work takes you, that I know that it’s kind of allowed you to see the world in a short time. But Durham still remains your home is what you’re saying here. Okay well, I wanted to thank you for your time Kennedi, and for sharing your thoughts, for sharing your work with us, too. It is compelling and looking so much forward to whatever else it is that you have that you’ll be producing, looking forward to that rebalancing act that you’re doing and what comes of it, because I’m really excited about what I’ve seen so far, I’m very happy that you are here in our community sharing those stories, and representing not only like Black creatives, but Black subjects and Black life and Black joy, I really appreciate that.
KC
Thank you so much and thank you for chatting. This was really insightful and I feel like I’m gonna walk away with a lot to think about, and a great thing to listen to later on and send to my mom.
GB
Yeah, me too. And I feel like I’m gonna go back and look at the photos and see them differently. I think that that is always the benefit of having a connection or talk with an artist is that now we get to experience the work through your eyes with just a little bit more information and that’s beautiful to me. And thank you so much for sharing and being so open with me today.
KC
Thank you.
