for the people who still read.
Review copies, interview requests, images and catalogue information for The Beauty of Everyday Thangs.
facts at a glance.
about the photographer.
Ken West is a documentary photographer based in Atlanta, Georgia. His grandparents were sharecroppers; there are records of them, but almost no pictures of the ordinary days that held the real life. That absence shaped his work.
For thirteen years, West photographed Black life on an ordinary Tuesday — the day the archive never bothered to keep. Working with film cameras, he made portraits across Havana, Nashville, New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit: nothing retouched, nothing staged, nothing reshot. The result is a record of the in-between — the beauty of the normal, preserved before it is edited out of memory.
His work has been exhibited at the Consulate General of France in Atlanta and is held in the permanent collections of the Mint Museum and the City of Atlanta. The Beauty of Everyday Thangs is now in its third independent printing.
what people are saying.
This collection captures the beauty of Black humanity, which is as unacknowledged as it is undeniable.
JAY-Z and Steve Stoute
Western history does not celebrate the magic of Black moments, the beauty of the normal. Ken West's astute snapshots of daily life are changing that.
Jen Sudul Edwards, PhD, Chief curator, The Mint Museum
This book celebrates the hard, the beautiful, and the brilliant in us; it is a love letter to Black people.
Jonell Logan, Executive director, League of Creative Interventionists
At once emotional, revelatory and sanguine. I will use a host of these images in my film classes.
Booker T. Mattison, Filmmaker, author, professor
press images.
Web-resolution assets below. High-resolution files are available on request.
press contact.
For review copies, interviews, image requests and institutional orders:
kenwest00@gmail.com