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Passport to Trespass
A dozen years and counting in the making, Mikael Kennedy’s series “Passport to Trespass” is a chef-d’oeuvre in Polaroid if there ever was one. The epic work is set to launch its seventh chapter, billed “Hunt Them Out,” later this month.
Working with some of the last precious cartridges of Polaroid 779 – the authentic and dreamy genuine stuff – Kennedy has crisscrossed North America several times with his SX-70. Over time, an emotional narrative with his surroundings and the acquaintances he’s made along the way has emerged.
A spiritual successor to the likes of Kerouac, he looks upon life as a visceral, riveting adventure and his work comes accordingly saturated with this perceptible enthusiasm. His fine art images are made with such simple honesty, no doubt accented by his studied choice of such an anachronistic and mercurial medium, that it’s clear he positively lives through and within them.
In a short conversation with us, he recounted, “I got caught by the police, one summer, climbing over a fence onto an abandoned and crumbling pier. They let me go when I showed them my camera and told them I just wanted to take a picture. That wasn’t the first time I had gotten out of trouble by showing my camera and explaining that I was just exploring…”
“To me the most important thing is a life that is lived at the end of it, not wasting my life is the goal, every single day that I am alive is important and should be spent accordingly. I recently told a friend I don’t care why the world is the way it is, I just want to see it before I go.”
His blog, Passport To Trespass, is definitely worth exploring at length and is frequently updated. Catch “Hunt Them Out” from its launch on February 21st, in tandem with an online exhibition and sale of limited-run prints through his gallery, Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art in New York.
