Kennedy Malsch
Updated: Sep 12
Kennedy Malsch is fluxus photographer working with digital, analogue film, and analogue photograms. She describes her work as beginning “with the belief beauty is not assigned. A place, object, or moment does not need to be extraordinary to become meaningful. Attention has the ability to transform the ordinary into something vivid, intimate, and worth preserving”.
The various photography of Kennedy Malsch in both digital and analogue film typically focus on either the figure concealed by surrounding nature or intimate still lifes which feel as delicate as they are haunting. Specifically, in the figurative nature work, these compositions feel particularly fluxus. The models do no seem to pose or perform but are rather documented in an improvised and spontaneous capturing. Within these compositions, we will find oversized saturated ferns and foliage overtaking the foreground. Sometimes we will find the figure literally hiding within the brush, meadow, or trees within the photograph. These female models are dressed in comfortable dresses, as if they were sirens emerging from the earth to tell a tale or sing a song to travelers passing by.
Within the frame of the photographs, both analogue and digital, we will find a saturated atmosphere. This delicate surface carries forth throughout the composition and the plants as well as figures seem to naturally ‘flow’ from this pale surface of the photography. There seems to be a hidden narrative within these photographs, even if not intentional. These figures explore and traverse the open brush and thick atmosphere of vines, meadows, forest, and over-arching ferns to reveal a oneness with nature. The young women in these photographs seem like Gaia-like goddesses integrated with the earth and forest, rather than actors, models, or performers. What essentially helps these attributes would be primal composition of the photographs. As if we were trekking through the thick forest or jungle, we find these ‘sirens’ within the dense brush, meadows, and foliage…dancing, lingering, and embracing nature. This especially becomes profound in the low-shots of these photographs.
Composition V. 4 - 1 (pictured above) is a detail of a larger landscape formatted photograph. Within the original photograph, the woman in the trees is difficult to spot. But when cropped, we can see her lingering in the limbs with a concerned look on her face as if she was searching for something. This tree is her sanctuary, perhaps she is calling upon spirits of the forest to protect hear from what she fears the most.
These enigmatic analogue and digital photographs by Kennedy Malsch reveal a consistent passion for nature. Her gift for indirect narrative reveals figures which seems in a state of flux within the confines of the forest. They are integrated with their surroundings within the brush, the meadows, foliage, forest, trees, jungles, and large ferns which engulf these compositions. Here, in these compositions, we will discover freedom and a spirit which is attuned to the exploration and wonders of fusing with Mother Earth. Even most of the still life photographs have this New Age spirit of mindfulness with natural states of environments through soft saturated capturing, a low composition, and a focus on improvised posing which reveals nature as a sanctuary and haven.
