With several lifetimes of work under his belt, David Michael Kennedy is a remarkable mixture of New York tenacity and New Mexican frontiersman. His splendid palladium prints of southwest lands and skies; celebrities like Bob Dylan, Isaac Stern and Bruce Springsteen; and Native American dancers from the Sioux Reservations in South Dakota, and New Mexican Pueblos have made Kennedy's work sought after by collectors from around the world.

Kennedy began to earn world-wide recognition developing a successful career in advertising, editorial, album cover and portrait photography in New York during the 1970s and 80s, amassing a portfolio of work that reads like a "who's who" list of international celebrities and cultural icons.

In 1987 Kennedy realized a long standing dream: leaving New York with his family to northern New Mexico, where he began to produce an intensely personal and captivating body of work based on the spectrum of the southwest experience. Over the years, Kennedy's imagery has ranged from land and cloudscapes, to portraits of colorful New Mexicans, native architecture, still lifes, and animals.

Paramount to his important body of self-assignments, and accomplishments, Kennedy continues to visually preserve the Sioux Fancy Dancers at the South Dakota Rosebud and Porcupine Reservations. Securing permission to photograph the dancers involved lengthy negotiations with the governing body of New Mexico’s Eight Northern Pueblos, with Kennedy arranging for a portion of the sales of prints to be paid to the pueblos. His acclaimed portfolio Dancers of the Northern Pueblos is a masterful series that combines his talents in portraiture, motion photography, sky and landscapes with the palladium process.

Each of Kennedy's palladium prints are made laboriously by hand. The rich brown tones of the palladium images bordered by lively brushstrokes recall turn-of-the-century sepia photography by Edward S. Curtis and albumen prints by William Henry Jackson.

Liz Kay
Revised in 2006 by The Gallery at 17 Peck