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Ken West was born in the historic Bordeaux neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee in 1971. From an early age he was fascinated by the world of storytelling that surrounded him. Weekly haircuts in Oprah Winfrey’s father’s barbershop and frequent trips to his grandparents farm first exposed him to the power of the synthesis of image and story in both rural and city life.
He is the author of The Beauty of Everyday Thangs: Documentary Portraits of Mindfulness and Black Revolutionary Normalcy, the culmination of a 13-year project to capture the candid realities of beauty within seven cities. While the book is focused on the everyday, it features appearances by legendary creative icons Melvin Van Peebles, Stic of Dead Prez, and British actor and musician Tricky.
Ken has studied at the University of Paris, 7 and holds graduate degrees from The Ohio State
University and New York University.
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My work is created in praise of common things. It is my belief that the common, no matter its origin, is frequently the seed of something spectacular. However, those common things don’t come with a label that speaks to the certainty or magnitude of their greatness.
At my core I am a documentarian in still and moving image. I capture people and things as they are, not how we wish they were or how they will ultimately be. I live on both ends of the camera in a recursive loop of mindful appreciation, curiosity, and reverence of my subjects.
My work is grounded in a passion for mindfulness and the power of the documentary image. The images I capture are of passing, everyday moments that, at their best, add to our seemingly endless mental reservoirs of fear, irony, beauty, confusion, hope, etcetera that give life its individualized texture and meaning.