Kendall Gilliam

Photographer

Kendall Gilliam (b. 1993 Savannah, GA) is a photo-based artist whose work focuses on examining the layered issues associated with the complexity of intersectional identity. Growing up, Gilliam had a fear of embracing his own bi-racial identity, because he is white presenting. Gilliam’s racial identity has been a focal point in his life that has bestowed experiences of both pride and shame in nature. A fear of shame that anyone would not allow him to identify with anything outside of a white. Both experiences rendered positive as he interprets them today with an educated mind. This fueled his research interest in race, identity, and community throughout his academic career, allowing him to approach photography with a sociological lens. Gilliam fell in love with photography in high school before going on to receive his bachelor’s in sociology from Huston-Tillotson University, an HBCU in East Austin, and his MA in Applied Sociology from Texas State University. Gilliam’s work celebrates and recognizes a fundamental need to explore intersectional identity, elevate invisible communities and reclaim cultural narratives from the status quo. Through his work, he fulfills his desire to dissect society’s fetishization of marginalized subcultures via photography.