About Us
Our Team
We're Constance Kennedy and Alan Kennedy — a photographer and a writer, partners in life and in this work, based on Boston's South Shore in Marshfield, Massachusetts, with our studio among the artists of the Sandpaper Factory in Rockland.
I'm Connie, and photography runs in my family. My father was a deeply talented amateur; my mother's father taught photography at Brooklyn Tech. Every wall of our home held family pictures or artwork, and an old album, tattered and filled with family photos, made a perfectly good Christmas gift. I assumed this was normal. Yet, it took years of working with clients to realize that it isn't. Not everyone grows up surrounded by images of the people they love. Part of what I do is help build that for them.
Alan and I season each other's work like salt and pepper. One of us writes better; the other photographs better. One is left-handed, the other right. One leans introvert, the other extrovert. One came from the East Coast, one from the West. Ask us both for directions and we'll agree on the destination but never on the route. It works. The mutual laughter and natural curiosity mean we cover more ground together than either of us would alone. Our clients are the ones who benefit.
A portrait can do more than show how someone looks. It can honor the goodness they’ve nurtured — their compassion, creativity, contributions, and love — and help it all last. That’s what we mean by legacy: a portrait that will hold its place on a wall, in an album, in a family’s memory for generations. The digital era put a camera in every pocket, but it raised a question worth asking: How do we make sure these photographs endure and tell the stories that deserve to be told? That’s the work — and it takes a seasoned eye, a listening ear, and care for both the person in front of the camera and the people who’ll one day inherit the picture.
Alan is a published short-story writer and Pushcart Prize nominee, with poetry, flash fiction, and journalism in his background. He spent years as a photographer and editor for a major Massachusetts corporation's in-house paper, is a certified technical writer, and works as a freelance manuscript editor, recently with several clients' memoirs and novels. On shoots, he's served as a second shooter and is my all-around partner behind the scenes. His editorial hand has shaped much of our work over the years.)
I'm a Certified Professional Photographer through the Professional Photographers of America, trained at the Nikon House in New York and the New England Institute for Professional Photography. I'm an active member of Professional Photographers of America, the Professional Photographers Association of Massachusetts (which honored me with a lifetime membership for service and encouragement to the community), and studied with the Professional Photographers of New England. I'm a juried artist member of the Cape Cod Art Center, the North River Arts Society, and the South Shore Art Center. I also hold a master's in Library and Information Science from Simmons University — which turns out to be remarkably useful for researching, archiving and preserving what matters.
Many of you knew our studio as The Welcome Gallery, and me as Connie Drapeau Kennedy. The names on the door have grown simpler, but the welcome hasn't changed. I still answer to Connie — always will.
Come find us at the Sandpaper Factory's 4th Floor Artists' Open Studios, a lively joyful weekend held twice a year.
Photos:
Connie (above) by Nancy Green Photography. Alan by Connie.
Both are a few years old, so we're due for an update. Perhaps you are, as well.