Two and a half years ago we moved a little closer to Santa Fe on Highway 14 since we have to drive our son to school in Santa Fe every day and we needed more space and bigger darkroom facilities." "The place looked like an old West mining town and we would wake up in the morning and find cows on our front porch. "The move to this little dirt town was the scariest thing we could do," he recalls. He also taught platinum printing on a one- to-one basic, the fortunate student residing in his home. Within a short time his work was represented in the Andrew Smith Gallery and other fine galleries in and around Santa Fe and he was invited to teach landscape and portrait photography at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop. A 100 year-old house in the remote village of Cerrillos, New Mexico, soon became home and despite the $200,000 drop in income the first year, Kennedy could photograph what he loved. So Kennedy and his wife Lucy, a native New Yorker, drove across the country and made some major life decisions. I wanted to make photographs for myself- landscapes, clouds, mountains." I didn't fit into that world being part photographer, part businessman, and part PR person. I don't understand the collector mentality, the art world pricing, the hype, the incredibly beautiful work that nobody ever buys, and the garbage that's sold for $20,000 to $30,000. I realized how far removed I was from the actual photo world. "You're either going up or going down and things were starting to get comfortable. "You can't stay where you are in New York," he says. In 1987 Kennedy realized that he had reached a plateau and knew that if he was going to stay in New York he would need to expand his business, hire more people, and climb to the next rung of the ladder. A client might send me a tape of Muddy Waters and say, "listen to it and make a photo of him." The photograph of a mellow, smiling Muddy Waters was followed by Bruce Springsteen quietly seated at the far end of a kitchen table, Isaac Stern peeking mischievously from behind his violin, Willie Nelson, baseball's Mickey Mantle, and numerous other notables. "I kept meeting more interesting people and getting more interesting jobs," he says, "and I had a tremendous amount of freedom in my work. Raised in northern California, Kennedy went to New York in the early 1970s to have back surgery and stayed for close to 20 years. A top celebrity photographer in New York for 18 years, with numerous CEBA and CLIO awards under his belt, Kennedy gave up his album covers, posters, and major editorial work, burned his bridges and headed for New Mexico, the land of enchantment. David Michael Kennedy life is too short to fritter it away in a place where he can not fulfill his dreams-even if he's making a bundle of money.
0 kommentar(er)
