Today we’d like to introduce you to Ken Marchionno
Hi Ken, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Like many, my onramp to the arts was through drawing and ceramics. I remember receiving praise for a vase I made in grade school and winning a state prize for a poster I drew when I was twelve. These moments of recognition meant a lot, but I was far from all in until I received my first camera. I was fifteen and it was a gift from my parents for becoming an Eagle Scout.
My first national recognition was from a series of infrared portraits I made my freshman year of college. Two were published in The American Infrared Survey, and traveled internationally. After graduation I worked as a photographer, for academic departments, and photography workshops in Philadelphia and New York. I received grants from the Humanities and the Arts for my documentary work photographing traveling carnivals and fur trappers. That work was published in magazines and news papers, and was exhibited in local museums and galleries. I moved to Los Angeles in 1990 and where I attended graduate school at CalArts and finished my Masters at UC Irvine. After graduation I moved to South Korea and taught photography and interactive design, but ended up back in Los Angeles, taking a teaching position at Pomona College.
In the mid 2000’s I worked as a stringer for the Associated Press and in the fashion photography industry, assisting photographers like Annie Leibovitz, and Steven Klein, for Vogue and W, Prada and Valentino. I shot campaigns for local LA designers. After eight years in commercial photography and journalism, I returned to teaching full time. I have taught at colleges and universities in the LA area, including multiple CSUs, Claremont Graduate University, and ArtCenter College of Design.
I produce work in a variety of media, video, installation, interactive, but I cherish photography’s ability to assign importance. It’s far from its only virtue, but for my intent I find it the best practice. From the earliest days of my career, I have embraced my role by making images for those I photograph. My skills are employed to help people feel seen, embracing their individuality and celebrating their contribution to the human experience. While I focus most of my effort on gifting back my work to the people I photograph, I also understand its wider purpose.
By 2026, there will have been 200 years of imagery in the archive of photographic representation. I believe it is my duty as an artist to question that archive and add substance to the collection. It’s an obligation I don’t take lightly.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t think there’s ever a smooth road. Being an artist is a dynamic life and finding your way through struggles is part of it. Like in anything, you have to have a core belief to lean on, and you have to recognize your successes along the way, whatever form they come in.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I have produced photographic work on traveling carnivals in the Mid Atlantic, a second grade classroom in rural Pennsylvania, a Boy Scout Troop in Santa Fe Springs, California, the 300-mile Future Generations Ride with the Lakota in South Dakota, and most recently my return to the land of my grandparents in the mountains of Abruzzo, Italy.
There is often a written component to my work, and over the last few decades I have directly embraced community engagement, facilitating the voices of those I work with, and promoting their work nationally and internationally.
In 2006, I started the Future Generations Teen Photojournalism Project to forward the voices of tribal youth from the Standing Rock, Cheyenne River and Oglala Sioux Tribes. Providing technology, instruction, and access to the internet, we work together to provide daily posts on Facebook from the road as the riders on horseback trace the historic 300-mile trail ending at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre. I have worked to create images for the tribe since 2004, documenting this annual affirmation of resilience, celebrating the memorial as an expression of tradition in a contemporary setting. Youth photographs and videos are integral to the work and are generally shown, posted, and published along with my work. Over the years I have facilitated exhibitions and screenings of student work in the US and Europe, including a two-year youth photography and video show at the MACHmit! Museum in Berlin, 2017-2019. Whenever the work is shown, I fundraise to bring tribal members to the venues to share their experiences. And when exhibiting the work during Covid, I used the opportunity to program six public Zoom events with Tribal elders, former Tribal Presidents, and youth from the reservations.
In spring of 2024 I traveled to Italy to produce @versopatria, an Instagram project about my return to the birth town of my grandparents—100 years after they left. Not knowing anyone there, I rented an apartment online, arrived by taxi, and stranded myself in this small and vibrant mountain town for a month. Having no language skills, and no real knowledge of the culture of my heritage, I had to rely on electronic translators and the few English speakers who live there. The community embrace was overwhelming. Every day for the duration, I posted up to ten photos and 250 words focusing on the experience, the effects of multi-generational assimilation, the return from the diaspora, and the collapse of time and space on return to a homeland. In the second iteration of this project I will return to the neighborhoods where my family first settled in the US to embrace the Italian American experience that was all but erased in the effort to assimilate. Because, the diasporic experience didn’t end at the border.
My personal work has exhibited in the US and abroad, including the Smithsonian Institution, The Third China Songzhuang Culture and Art Festival in China, the Moscow Film Festival, the National Center for the Arts in Mexico City, and the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA. I have given talks on my work at venues like the US Embassy in Prague, the John Fante Literary Festival in Italy, the Journey Museum in Rapid City, Wellesley College, and CalArts. From 2013–2016, I was the Director/Curator of an alternative video venue, TRACTIONARTS, in the downtown Los Angeles Arts District, and curated an experimental video screening for the Spring/Break Art Show LA in 2019.
I have received grants from the humanities and the arts, including the California Community Foundation and the Society for Photographic Education. My photography, has been published in newspapers, magazines, and books, including the New York Times, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, and college texts like Robert Hirsch’s Thinking about Photography in the Digital Age, and Betty Ann Brown’s Art and Mass Media. I have written creative pieces and criticism for journals and art magazines in the US and Korea, including Art Papers, Sajin Yeasul, and Errant Bodies.
Pricing:
- Price On Request
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kenmarchionnostudio.com
- Instagram: @kenmarchionno
- Youtube: https://vimeo.com/user18549207
