David Michael Kennedy: American-Indian Dance

©David Michael Kennedy-All Rights Reserved

I infrequently blog about photography projects or galleries of American subjects on The Travel Photographer simply because it's not really one of my self-professed purviews, but once in a while I stumble on photographic work that easily transcends this reference point.

The work of David Michael Kennedy is one of those.

David Michael Kennedy is an art photographer from New Mexico who lived in New York City, specializing in portraits of musicians such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Muddy Waters for magazine and album covers. Having moved to New Mexico in the mid 80's, he focused on Native American culture, and more recently wandered back roads photographing preachers, craw-fishermen  RV-ers, buffaloes, longhorns, cowboys and mystics.

He wandered in a 1959 Airstream trailer outfitted with a wet darkroom, and took all his photographs with a handmade 4x5 camera using Polaroid positive/negative film, which he developed in the trailer then made contact prints using the archaic platinum palladium process.

Having worked with a 4x5 camera, he is now revisiting the square format with a Hasselblad.

An interesting interview with NPR is here.