Photographing in the Land of Enchantment

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The Taos Hoop Dancer moved gracefully in the wintery air below the massive snowcapped mountain. Photographer David Michael Kennedy was shooting with a 2 1/4 Hasselblad camera, concentrating on those moments when the dancer's back curved like the hoops in his hand. This was Kennedy's second session with a Pueblo Dancer and things seemed to be going well. He had decided to shoot without a filter, despite his earlier success photographing a Buffalo Dancer from Tesuque Pueblo with a red filter. The palladium prints from that session were good material for the upcoming portfolio. Shot from a low vantage point, the Buffalo Dancer seemed airborne in a cloudy sky. High grasses softened the details of his feet, and the red filter had intensified dark areas on his skirt, feathers, and buffalo horns against the bright sky. It took only a small effort to imagine the figure as a buffalo lumbering across the plains.

In the darkroom, Kennedy watched the images of the Hoop Dancer emerge, and immediately sensed something was wrong. Over the next week he tried different exposures and chemicals, but finally had to admit the work wasn't up to par. It was a case of wasted money and time, and he was not looking forward to renegotiating with the skittish Taos governors. Still, he could and would get a better image of the Hoop Dancer. Kennedy occasionally retraces his steps, but he never veers from his path.

At forty-two, David Michael Kennedy has several lifetimes of photographic work under his belt. An independent, intelligent and imaginative artist, he is a remarkable mixture of New York tenacity and New Mexican frontiersman. In New York, Kennedy was awarded time and again for his album covers, posters, and editorial photo spreads for magazines like Elle, Food and Wine, New York, Omni, Time, Penthouse, Rolling Stone and Spin. His regular clients included Hasselblad Cameras, NATO, CBS News and The American Red Cross. A decade later, the freshness of this work still stops viewers in their tracks. His photographs of Muddy Waters surrounded by family or beaming in a close-up, simply makes you feel good. A bearded, saffron-robed Indian guru rises like a sacred mountain. Willy Nelson, Mickey Mantle, Isaac Stern, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and rock star Blondie each gave something special to Kennedy, who has a gift for making almost anyone feel at home. As writer Emily H. Simson remarked without exaggeration, "Kennedy's stunning assignment work could be viewed as comfortably on a gallery wall as on the printed page." At the same time that Kennedy was winning CEBA and CLIO awards for his commercial work, he was also cutting a name for himself in the fine art market, exhibiting work in the U.S., Britain and Europe.