Marla Hamburg Kennedy

Marla Hamburg Kennedy is an American art curator, dealer and publisher specializing in contemporary art and photography. She is also an author and has published 15 photography books. She is the founder and owner of HK Photographs located in New York City.^[1]

Early life

Kennedy was raised in West Orange, New Jersey, United States. She attended Barnard College, Columbia University, where she graduated in Art History and completed graduate studies in photographic history at New York University.

Career

Kennedy worked at various museums and art galleries in her early career, including MoMA PS1, New York and Galerie Lucio Amelio, Naples, Italy.

During her tenure at Galerie Lucio Amelio, Kennedy represented the gallery interests in the United States. In 1985 she helped assemble the seminal Andy Warhol Retrospective^[2] at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, worked with Andy Warhol producing of his serigraph edition, Vesuvius.^[3] and acted as translator of the Vesuvius catalogue.

In 1989, Kennedy moved to Los Angeles and became Director of the Richard Green Gallery, and later Angles Gallery, Venice, CA.

In 1992, Kennedy became the Director of the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery of photography. During this time she curated the exhibitions for the gallery as well as traveling shows with accompanying catalogs in Japan. These included Kissing, Marilyn Monroe in Photography, Nobuyoshi Araki and the Nude in Photography and Wedding Days.

In 1994, Kennedy opened Picture This Publications, a small fine art and photography publishing company. She later organised an exhibition from her personal collection entitled Fashion Photography From The 20th Century which was exhibited at the Shinsegae Gallery Gallery in Seoul, South Korea.

Kennedy helped build art collections for private collectors and Fortune 500 corporations, including Litton Industries (Los Angeles), Bain & Company (New York/ Los Angeles), Artisan Entertainment (New York/ Los Angeles), United Talent Agency (Los Angeles) Relativity Media (Los Angeles).

In 1996, Kennedy moved back to New York to become the Director of the Howard Greenberg Gallery. During this time she organized many exhibitions, as well as the first International Festival of Fashion Photography in Tokyo Japan.^[4]

In 1999, Kennedy was named Vice President of Photography at Onview.com^[5] where she helped build one of the first and largest eCommerce sites to sell fine art.

in 2000, Kennedy opened Kennedy Boesky Gallery with Marianne Boesky In New York City, where they did the first show in New York of the work of Leni Riefenstahl.

In 2001, Kennedy opened her eponymous company, Hamburg Kennedy Photographs, which has become HK Art Advisory Salon located on the Upper West Side of New York.

Publications

She has published and authored 15 photography books.

• The Kiss: Photographic Images (Greystone 1993)
• The Nude/Nobuyoshi Araki (H20 Company, 1993)
• Wedding Days (H20 1994); Little Angels (DAP, 1996)
• Little Devils (DAP 1996); I Do (DAP 1997)
• Car Culture (Gibbs Smith, 1997)
• International Festival of Fashion Photography I (H20 Japan, 1999)
• Fashion Photography II (H20, 2001)
• Twin Towers: An Elegy (Picture This Pub, 2002)
• Variety: Photographs by Nan Goldin (Rizzoli 2006)
• Havana Libre: Photographs by Michael Dweck (Damiani 2012)

Her book, Looking at Los Angeles (Metropolis/DAP 2005), co-edited with Ben Stiller^[6][7] was nominated as the best art book on Amazon.com. A more recent book, New York: A Photographer's City (Rizzoli 2011) produced in partnership with the designer Richard Pandiscio captured images of post 9-11 New York City as documented by contemporary photographers.^[8]

In 2014, Kennedy worked with fashion photographer Ormond Gigli to produce the monograph, Ormond Gigli (Powerhouse 2014). She helped produce the book Lenny Kravitz (Rizzoli 2014) for which she wrote the Afterword. In 2015 she released her second book on Los Angeles, with introduction by Edward Ruscha, Both Sides of Sunset: Photographs of Los Angeles (Metropolis/DAP Spring 2015)

In 2016, Kennedy worked in collaboration with French curator Jérôme Sans to produce Lipstick Flavor: A Contemporary Art Story with Photography (2016,Damiani)^[9][10]

Kennedy is currently working on her next book, BKLYN, images of Brooklyn though eyes of contemporary photographers and artists (Rizzoll 2018).

Personal life

Kennedy has homes in upstate New York and New York City and shares profits from her business with animal rescue, cancer awareness and research. She was a member of the National Art Club in New York City from 1996 to 2005.

References