DAVID MICHAEL KENNEDY

During the years Kennedy worked as a commercial photographer in New York City, he received numerous awards for his album covers, posters and editorial photo spreads for magazines like Elle, Food and Wine, New York Magazine, Omni, Time, Penthouse, Rolling Stone and Spin. His regular clients included Hasselblad Cameras, NATO, CBS News, CBS Records, Atlantic Records and The American Red Cross. At the same time he was winning CEBA and CLIO awards for his celebrity portraits of such notables as Muddy Waters, Willy Nelson, Isaac Stern and Bob Dylan, Kennedy was creating a name for himself in the fine art market, exhibiting in galleries in the U.S., Britain and Europe.

Underlying their subject matter, the appeal of Kennedy's photographs lies in their artistry. Elegant, lyrical compositions bordered with a flourish of brush strokes are immediately recognizable as Kennedy's style, while the rich brown tones of the palladium prints recall turn-of-the-century sepia photographs by Edward S. Curtis and William Henry Jackson. The similarity is more than visual since Kennedy laboriously makes each print by hand, using technical skills acquired years before at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California.