Richard K. Kent

Alongside my identity as a scholar of Chinese painting and photography, I am a writer and visual artist. A professor at Franklin & Marshall College, I teach courses in East Asian art and cultural history as well as in the history of Western photography. I received my B.A. in English from Oberlin College and the M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese art and archaeology from Princeton University. Work as an academic has supported my  artistic and literary practice. While a demanding choice, the study of many facets of Chinese cultural history, including Buddhist history and philosophy, has offered vital perspectives that inform what I make as an artist and a writer.

 

I began to write poems and make photographs as a teenager. As a writer, I have published poems in assorted literary magazines. Ice Carver, a chapbook of twenty poems, was published in 2017 and followed by the book-length collection Seeking Habitat in 2022. As a photographer, I make pictures that echo and extend my concerns as a writer. Series like Approximate Knowledge and Mental Images explore the documentary, the fictive, and visual conundrums that fall in between. Several ongoing series document places and their transformation over time (Past Houses of Light, Patch of Woods, Lessons in Recursion, and Off Route 42). The series Patch of Woods particularly reflects my concern about  widespread loss of habitat.

 

For over two decades I have shown photographs in juried exhibitions throughout the United States. My work is in the following collections: Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College; Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College; the Lancaster Museum of Art, Lancaster, PA; and the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA.