Found on NPR's
the picture show PHOTO STORIES FROM NPRA Handmade Camera And A Vintage Trailer: On The Road To A Lost AmericaBy John Burnett
David Michael Kennedy is a 60-year-old art photographer from New Mexico who took an extraordinary cross-country journey to rediscover what he thought was a lost America. He shares his photos here, and responds to a few questions.
David Michael Kennedy with Heather Howard and Henry Crow Dog in front of their 1959 Airstream trailer.
Courtesy of David Michael KennedyIn the '70s and '80s, David Michael Kennedy lived in New York City, shooting portraits of music icons like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Muddy Waters for magazine and album covers. He moved to New Mexico in 1986, where he focused on Native American culture. Today he lives in a 200-year-old adobe house in the tiny agricultural village of El Rito in northern New Mexico.
But for two years beginning in 2004, Kennedy wandered back roads photographing preachers, crawfishermen, RV-ers, buffaloes, longhorns, cowboys and mystics.
He and his girlfriend, Heather Howard, and a res dog named Henry Crow Dog packed up in a 1959 Airstream trailer outfitted with a wet darkroom. He took all his photographs with a handmade 4x5 camera using Polaroid positive/negative film, which he developed in the trailer then made contact prints using the archaic platinum palladium process prized by collectors and museums.
"The Wigwam Village Motel in Holbrook, Ariz., is one of the last remaining wigwam motels in the country. At one time
there were 15 of them stretched all across the U.S. on Route 66 — old concrete teepees. This was number six."
Courtesy of David Michael Kennedy
