New Mexico
We’ve been a fan of the inspirational work of American photographer Mikael Kennedy for years now. After releasing the incredible Done to Death Projects publication ‘California‘ last year, he has now returned on its own with a sequel to that series named ‘New Mexico’. In the same familiar toned down color palette, Kennedy once more takes the spectator on one of his tremendous journeys through wide open landscapes, which he distilled into a collection of 31 color photographs blessed with his signature aesthetic, taken during his stay in the American state last November. Kennedy presents the new project in a tremendous 44-page zine, which was printed in his homebase New York City – limited to 200 copies. We can’t get enough of Kennedy’s images which evoke somewhat of an escapist and melancholic sentiment within the beauty of the depicted landscapes, making us want to hit to road every time we lay our eyes on them.
Mikael on ‘New Mexico’ in an interview with another one of our favorites, Need Supply Co.:
New Mexico is hard to explain, there are two places and times in my life when I would say I “woke up.” New Mexico is one of those places. I’ve been exploring there since I was 19 when I was living out of my car for a few months driving around the country, I had come up through El Paso via the Guardalupe Mountains, slept in a truckstop outside of Las Cruses, woke up and drove into White Sands, a place I knew nothing about but was told to check out.
And on his favorite spots in the Land of Enchantment:
Everyone should go to White Sands, drive the High Road to Taos, the Shiprock shop in Santa Fe, visit Nakashima’s church in Abiquiu, pretty much stop in every old church, buy some chilis at the Santuario de Chimayo, hike to the top of Tent rocks, go east to the grass lands and north to where the hills start rolling up towards the rockies, drive through Silver City and into the Gila National Forest, drive out to the Mogollon Ghost town just for the road, it’s gnarly, winding through the mountains.
Mikael Kennedy is a New York City-based commercial and fine art photographer. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed Polaroid travel blog; Passport to Trespass, documenting his 10 years of wandering the United States with a Polaroid SX70. Kennedy’s Polaroids are part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX as well as in private collections worldwide. Having appeared in print in The New Yorker, Nylon, Dazed & Confused, WWD, Kennedy’s photography has been being profiled online with GQ, Esquire, Time, Newsweek Magazine, and the WSJ. He won ‘Cover of the Year’ in Munich at the 2011 BCP Awards for EB Magazine featuring a photograph from his American landscape series ‘The Odysseus’. Last year Kennedy released the incredible ‘California‘ with Chris Black’s Done to Death Projects, which sold out in one week after its release.
Order ‘New Mexico’ before it’s gone here.