Beyoncé Covers British Vogue December, Lensed by Kennedi Carter

At age 21, Kennedi Carter becomes the youngest photographer to shoot a British Vogue cover — actually three covers of Beyoncé Carter-Knowles, accompanied by a 20-page fashion spread for the December 2020 issue Beyoncé requested that a woman of color shoot the portraits, then taking on a new mission with Vogue UK’s editor-in-chief Edward Enninful to find her.

Carter takes the youngest photographer accolade from David Bailey, who shot model Enid Boulting for the February 1961 cover of British Vogue.

On her website, Kennedi Carter, a Durham, North Carolina, native now living in Dallas, describes her work as exploring “the aesthetics & sociopolitical aspects of Black life as well as the overlooked beauties of the Black experience: skin, texture, trauma, peace, love, and community. Her work aims to reinvent notions of creativity and confidence in the realm of Blackness.” Carter is represented by Candace Gelman & Associates, with offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco .

Learn More About Kennedi Carter

In the notes that accompany her work, Kennedi Carter said that she has been trying to be gentler to herself. Credit...Kennedi Carter for The New York Times

Kennedi Carter was featured in a June 2020 Times Insider profile: ‘In Self-Portraits, 27 Black Photographers Reflect Themselves and America’.

In August, she was one of 18 up and coming photographers profiled in the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch 2020.

Other photographers honored included Sumi Anjuman / Gi Seok Cho / River Claure /Micaiah Carter / Thana Faroq / Alina Frieske / Neha Hirve / M’hammed Kilito / Rafael Pavarotti / Spandita Malik / Valya Lee / Agnieszka Sejud / Michael Swann / Eliska Sky / Abdo Shanan / David Uzochukwu / Ana Zibelnik

Visit Carter’s Instagram for an overview of her work.

On Photographing Beyoncé

“It feels like it dropped out of the sky,” Carter tells British Vogue about the career-changing commission. “I’m 21… I haven’t really had many opportunities like this. . . . “I thought I wouldn’t be able to do something at this level unless I was older, with many years in the game,” she says. “This is for people at the pinnacle of their careers.”

Was she nervous about training her lens on one of the most famous, and famously meticulous women in the world? “I was just going with the flow. I had done a lot of research into how she works, and I had underestimated how much she’s willing to submit herself to a vision and truly become someone else’s muse,” says Carter, who worked closely with Parkwood Entertainment creative director Kwasi Fordjour on the shoot, which was styled remotely by Enninful via Zoom. The resulting sense of freedom was a surprise to Carter, who says Beyoncé’s ability to “control her own narrative” has always been one of the things she admires most about her. The superstar’s sheer professionalism aside, Beyoncé was “just so, so nice,” Carter says. “Plus she’s from Texas. So she has that energy.”