About The Artist

Christopher Kennedy was born in the United Kingdom and lives and works in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is the latest in a long line of artistic talents to emerge from his family. After many years of working in Hollywood as a successful music editor on feature films, Kennedy chose to pursue his photographic passion. His latest creations are painstakingly composed using, in his words, “fixed light sources as the paint, and the camera as both brush and canvas.” Brilliantly coloured lights have fascinated Kennedy since boyhood. As he grew he became intrigued by how his camera had the ability to capture images of light that remain unseen by the naked eye. Inspired by the experimental light painting works of Man Ray and Picasso, the adult Kennedy embarked on a journey exploring the possibilities of artworks capturing this elusive quality of light. Both Man Ray and Picasso ‘painted’ in the air with a light ‘pencil’ as a camera captured their actions. The pictures they drew were gone before the human eye could perceive them, but the old camera faithfully recorded their ghostly movements on a single frame of film. Contrarily, Kennedy’s own technique, Photo Luminism, begins with the meticulous staging of stationary lights and culminates with the preconceived manipulation of the camera during a single long exposure. In those brief moments, the digital device captures a canvas overflowing with rich and seemingly impossible imagery: a light unseen captured in the blink of an eye. Kennedy says this of his work, “The challenge for me in creating this series was to result in something different; something fresh and alluring; to show how beautiful light unseen can be; to present a purist photographic image that transcends the traditional interpretation of abstract photography, captures the imagination, and stimulates thought and conversation.” Kennedy prints his images onto two opposing surfaces for entirely different effects: brushed aluminium for its inherent ability to enhance their depth and luminosity through the diffuse reflection of ambient light; and fine art paper for incredibly warm, saturated colours and deep velvet blacks. Photo Luminism images are created entirely in-camera, in a single exposure. A live dodging technique is occasionally utilized during photography, but only minor exposure adjustments are made in post. A digital signature is all that is added using Photoshop. The innovative Photo Luminism® technique was created by Christopher Kennedy in 2011 in order to create purist images of lightscapes that defy explanation.