Kennedi Carter is on the road again

Kennedi Carter is driving to a shoot when she calls me. The American photographer has been busy non-stop since 2020, when aged just 21 she was called up by British Vogue to shoot Beyoncé for the December cover. Looking back, she recalls being “extremely honoured” but also “very nervous”: Carter was the youngest photographer ever commissioned for the magazine’s cover, and it was her first fashion shoot. But that was four years ago, Carter’s moved on.

She’s since photographed Black cowboys of the southern states; the wetlands of Louisiana; Mardi Gras in New Orleans; and herself and her young son, through her pregnancy and in the early years of his life. “Again, I’m in this period of transition, trying to figure out the things that I want and how I would like my work to live,” she tells me. This week, another first. She’s showing her work at Photo London with Cierra Britton, a New York gallery “dedicated to BIPOC womxn artists.” I wanted to hear more about the changes she’s going through, how she wound up here and where she’s going.

Carter calls herself “a child of the south.” She was born in 1998, in Charlottesville, Virginia, but grew up in Durham, North Carolina and for some time lived in Dallas, Texas. Her journey into photography began in high school. “I had been passively making photos around that time. I was inspired by my grandmother. She was the family photographer — she was always taking photos at all of our events — and we considered her to be an archivist of sorts.” At school, Carter learned the basics. How to load and shoot film and how to use the darkroom. All the time she was “trying to figure out what it is that I was most interested in.”

Carter took a photography course at college, but soon dropped out to go freelance. “Does that mean you’re going to work for free?” her mother asked. Carter laughs, “I mean, maybe she was onto something because during that time I was shooting for free quite a lot.” Her life turned around in 2020, when she was selected as ‘One to Watch’ by the British Journal of Photography and then by Vogue for the Beyoncé shoot. But Carter says that her style and interests have changed quite a bit since then. “When I was first beginning my practice, I was tapped into more documentary style things, or stories that were extremely true, or had an air of truth to them. Now, I’m also interested in telling a story, or even staging a photograph.”

She talks about an ongoing project with religious communities on the Sea Islands of South Carolina. In these groups, freshwater baptisms used to be extremely popular, however because of tourism, climate change and water depletion they are becoming less frequent. “So now I’m getting in contact with people about staging some fresh water baptisms and photographing them. It’s in reference to the past but it’s also putting in the work to build the reality that no longer exists.” She says that “memory is one of those things that it’s constantly shifting,” and that restaging pictures allows different memories and interpretations to be brought together; an important practice in the context of Black Americans, who might lack accurate recorded family and community histories.

I ask Carter how becoming a mother has affected her recent work, in practical terms and in her thoughts. “It definitely slows my process down. I mainly shoot film, so in general, my process is a slow one,” she says. She’s also now thinking more deeply about what mothering means and looks like, and she adds that the pressures of everyday care have refined her practice. She’s forced to think about which projects will be worth her time and which won’t. “That’s time that I could be spending with my kid or that’s time that I could be washing the dishes.”

Does she feel closer to her grandmother, the “family archivist”, now that she has her own family? “I definitely understand why my grandmother was operating the way she was; photographing every single moment.” Carter tells me that there have been a number of particularly hard-hitting deaths in her family. “Sometimes you just end up losing the glue that holds you together.” She says that having her grandmother’s old photographs to hand is helpful. “That’s what kind of drives me to keep making photographs.”

Given Carter’s focus on the Black American south, what does she think London audiences will make of her work? She hopes people will see how expansive the Black diaspora is. “We contain multitudes,” she says. “There’s not one single way to be Black. If anything, I’d like for folks to become familiar with the work that a lot of Black southerners are doing to liberate themselves, engage with the idea of freedom, but also show what brings us immense joy and happiness. I kind of want folks to feel as though they’re coming for a visit, and that they’re able to witness what the mundane looks like out here and see the beauty in it.”

Talking about future plans, Carter reels off a list of places across the southern states that she’s planning on travelling to over the next month; New Orleans, South Carolina, North Carolina and Mississippi. “I feel like I’m always just meeting random people…” She’s hoping to find believers in Hoodoo spirituality and medicine known as conjure women, and she’s interested in meeting land cultivators, in particular oyster farmers whose beds are being destroyed by climate change. “And also cowboys! I’m constantly working with them.” She laughs and adds that her real dream is to photograph Ozzy Osbourne or Dolly Parton. “I’m interested in their lore and the place they hold in culture.”

I wonder how she finds her usual subjects, is it a case of rolling into town and seeing who’s about?  “I always joke with my friends that I’m kind of like a private investigator. I’ll just research and research until I come across the right person,” she laughs. Though, she sometimes finds that the easiest way to connect with people is by putting her camera down, getting to know them, and only later asking to take their photograph.

Carter’s approach has developed dramatically since the early years of her career. “I definitely feel like I’m not the same photographer. I feel like I’ve changed a great deal. I feel like my interests have changed, my style has changed. And I think that’s ok, some projects are for then and some are for now. I’m still open to engaging with the older work, but do I feel like that is where my spirit is at the moment? Not necessarily.”