Kennedi Carter

Kennedi Carter (born Dec 31, 1998, Charlottesville, Virginia) is an American artist and photographer whose photographic practice explores Black life, intimacy, memory, beauty, and the sociopolitical dimensions of representation. Working across fine art and editorial photography, Carter examines skin, texture, softness, trauma, love, and community through richly composed portraits and images that center the emotional and aesthetic complexity of Black experience.  Carter studied African American Studies at Duke University. Her work often engages portraiture, archives, memory, and Black southern life, using intimate image-making, stylized composition, and an attention to everyday beauty to consider confidence, care, inheritance, and the visual language of Black self-representation. Her practice moves fluidly between editorial commissions and fine art projects, while maintaining a consistent investment in Black subjectivity and the power of the photographic image.  Her work has been exhibited at the RISD Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Saatchi Gallery, the Harwood Museum of Art, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center. She has received recognition including British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch, The New York Times’ “next great image makers” recognition, and Adweek’s Creative 100. Carter is currently based in the American South.