Brenda Ann Kenneally at the Bag

Photo by Brenda Ann Kenneally

Sandra C. Roa's short introduction to Brenda Ann Kenneally—who had to get out of Albany and landed in Troy—at Bag News Notes. "I really don't have any desire to go to another country...there's so much to do here."

Mike
(Thanks to Michael Shaw)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "Brenda Ann Kenneally's photographs of the inhabitants of her drug-blighted neighborhood in Brooklyn from a few years ago were unbelievably intense. Like Eugene Richards on a good day, which is saying something. Her photographs of the underclass in Troy, New York, are just as good. I also live in a poverty-stricken upstate NY community, and I find her photos almost unbearably tragic. These are the people I know. Yet when I listen to her describing her own work, I just can't get past her cigarette-scarred voice. I can't help thinking she hasn't escaped this self-destructive cycle at all."

Featured Comment by Eamon Hickey: "I second Geoff's opinion of Ms. Kenneally's work documenting the drug culture in and around New York City—among the best photojournalism I've ever seen. She is not unknown (she's won several important photojournalism awards over the years, and gotten the odd Guggenheim, etc.), but I think she's underknown—doesn't have the wider reputation she deserves given the quality of her work (or at least that used to be true back in 2005 or so when I first came across her; maybe it's changed since then)."

Comments

[Marty McAuliff]

One more reason TOP is among the first five websites of my Bookmark Bar...thanks for posting this.
I myself moved from Albany to Troy (and back and forth a few times, with Schenectady tossed in a couple of times) between 1990 and 2004. Honestly, Ms. Kenneally's work is spot-on. The tri-city area, including Troy/Albany/Schenectady, can be the most sad and wonderful slice of American life simultaneously.
...and great photographers come from there as well.

[Sean]

I remember reading Stephen Mayes article about how repetitive the World press entries are

"From the infinity of human experience the list of subjects covered by the entrants would fill a single page, and (excluding sports as a specialist area) could be reduced even to three lines:

- The disposed and the powerless
- The exotic
- Anywhere but home (the American election would be one of the exceptions to this rule….)"

It was the Anywhere but home line that I most remembered and it immediately sprang to mind when Brenda spoke about having no desire to go to another country

Some people don't understand how you can be from a tough place and have very little but still love and care about it. To be proud to come from a place with little to offer other than struggle. A place that you may one day get to leave but never leaves you. Mines never left me...

You can see it's never left Brenda

[Eamon Hickey]

I second Geoff's opinion of Ms. Kenneally's work documenting the drug culture in and around New York City -- among the best photojournalism I've ever seen.

She is not unknown (she's won several important photojournalism awards over the years, and gotten the odd Guggenheim etc.), but I think she's underknown -- doesn't have the wider reputation she deserves given the quality of her work (or at least that used to be true back in 2005 or so when I first came across her; maybe it's changed since then).