About Kinship

The Kinship Photography Collective is a global community of practice that invites photographers (of all levels) to deepen their empathy, intimacy, and connections with the natural world and each other.

Launched in June 2022, Kinship emerged from the Six Feet photography project. During the earliest days of the pandemic, Six Feet coalesced around an urgent call for engagement and a passion for inquiry, collaboration, and generosity. By practicing together, we found new ways of making meaning in our shifting world. We created a collective visual narrative of the pandemic that touched on the pain and possibilities of hope, community, and strength. 

At the heart of Kinship is an equally urgent call. Beyond the pandemic is an ecological and social crisis that needs our love, care, and attention. Together we are exploring the unique roles that photography can play in this critical moment while supporting and encouraging photographers to share the questions and photographs that emerge from within their own lives. 

How does it work? Our engagement process is simple, adaptive, and highly collaborative. We see Kinship as a verb, not a noun. In kinship, all is in motion; all is relating and becoming. With a passion for community, we introduce big questions to hundreds of curious image-makers (of all levels) and invite honest and courageous engagement. We gather, learn, and generously share resources in support of each other’s practice. As a member-led and supported project, generosity and reciprocity are the kindling of our community. In contrast to cultures of competition, we freely share resources knowing that our visual voices will be woven into collective galleries and exhibitions that provide in-depth and diverse perspectives–opening the door to new ways of seeing, knowing, and caring.

In addition to inspiring and uplifting individual photographers, Kinship works with schools, organizations, institutions, and faith-based communities. We offer uniquely designed photography workshops, exhibitions, and community engagement programs that foster empathy and curiosity, build community, and inspire action. Kinship welcomes community partnerships and cross-sector collaborations. 

Please explore the website and get to know us through our free weekly community gatherings. If you are interested in becoming a Kinship member, learn more about the culture of kinship . If you would like to join in, our step-by-step community guide is the best way to get started.

We hope you will be inspired to make kin with us through the phenomenal medium of photography.

 

“We have to escape the life of commodity and replace it with the life of community.”

— Richard Powers

Why We Gather

The planet is changing rapidly. Whether you call it the Anthropocene or the sixth great extinction, restoring a thriving planet requires cultural and collective reimagining. “The ecological crisis we are now facing is a direct and inevitable consequence of human separatism that has created a culture in which great, teeming, reciprocal communities of living things have become nothing but commodities that we use with impunity—as if somehow the very cycles of interdependence were no longer something that we had to answer to.”₁ But answer we must. 

Transforming our relationships with the more-than-human world and each other requires new ways of seeing and responding. And in this precarious moment, who better to answer the call than artists and makers: “to us falls the task of imaginatively restoring agency and voice to all beings. As with all the most important artistic endeavors in human history, this is a task that is at once aesthetic and political—and because of the magnitude of the crisis, this call to respond carries with it the most pressing moral urgency.”₂

The Kinship Photography Project is one small (but mighty) answer to this urgent call. 

₁. Emergence Magazine. "Kinship, Community, and Consciousness: An Interview with Richard Powers." Podcast audio. n.d. https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/kinship-community-and-consciousness/.

₂. Ghosh, A. (2021). The nutmeg's curse: Parables for a planet in crisis. University of Chicago Press.