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KENNEDI CARTER

New York, NY, USA

Photography, Archival and found image practice

Kennedi Carter's lens does not seek spectacle. It seeks proximity. Her practice is built on the belief that the Black experience contains overlooked beauties — in skin, texture, peace, love, and community — and that photography is the tool for making those beauties undeniable and permanent.

Her work moves across fine art and editorial, but the commitment is consistent: to center Black subjects with full reverence for their individuality and collective spirit. She does not document trauma as spectacle. She bears witness to the complexity of humanity — the solemnity, the intimacy, the vulnerability — and the strength of the gaze between her lens and her subjects gives every image a quality of deep familiarity.

Carter's practice has expanded into archival work, placing contemporary Black experience in conversation with ancestral memory and intergenerational connection. The American South is her landscape — its ecology, its spirituality, its history. She works inside that landscape not to contain it, but to honor what it holds and challenge what it has been made to mean.

Carter, Kennedi (b. 1998, Charlottesville, Virginia) is a visual artist and photographer based in the American South. She is represented by ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica. Her fine art has been acquired by the Rhode Island School of Design, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Wilson Centre for Photography in London, among others. Her work has been exhibited at the RISD Museum (2022), the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (2024), Saatchi Gallery (2024), and the Harwood Museum of Art (2022). In 2020, Carter was tapped by British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful to photograph Beyoncé for the magazine's cover, becoming the youngest cover photographer in the publication's history. Her editorial clients include British Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Essence, Google, and Apple. She has been recognized by AT&T's Black Future Makers (2022), The Root's Future 25 (2021), Adweek's Creative 100 (2021), the New York Times as a Top 4 Next Great Image Maker (2021), and the British Journal of Photography's Ones to Watch (2020). She is the grand prize winner of the Hariban Award.

<p class="font_8">Carter, Kennedi (b. 1998, Charlottesville, Virginia) is a visual artist and photographer based in the American South. She is represented by ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica. Her fine art has been acquired by the Rhode Island School of Design, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Wilson Centre for Photography in London, among others. Her work has been exhibited at the RISD Museum (2022), the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (2024), Saatchi Gallery (2024), and the Harwood Museum of Art (2022). In 2020, Carter was tapped by British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful to photograph Beyoncé for the magazine's cover, becoming the youngest cover photographer in the publication's history. Her editorial clients include British Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Essence, Google, and Apple. She has been recognized by AT&T's Black Future Makers (2022), The Root's Future 25 (2021), Adweek's Creative 100 (2021), the New York Times as a Top 4 Next Great Image Maker (2021), and the British Journal of Photography's Ones to Watch (2020). She is the grand prize winner of the Hariban Award.</p>

KENNEDI CARTER

Selected Work

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