Goldsmiths - University of London

David Kendall

David Kendall’s photography and research explore how spatial, economic and design initiatives, as well as participatory practices, combine to encourage social and spatial interconnections or conflict in cities. He is a graduate of LCC, University of the Arts London and Goldsmiths, University of London where he studied photography, urban studies, design and geosociology. His photography and research have been published and included in exhibitions, festivals and conferences in the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and the USA.

David designs research projects with NGOs, media and educational organisations including PhotoVoice, Ojos que Sienten and Thomson Reuters. These workshops explore how digital and photo media can be utilised to discover, create and question spatial and social awareness and self-identity in cities. Collaborative projects have combined photographic practice with other sensory techniques such as sound, touch and smell to 'map' urban and architectural environments. Since 2009, David has been working with Dr Alison Rooke developing participatory research that considers links between arts practice, visual ethnography and citizenship.

In 2010 David curated with Lanis Levy an exhibition and symposium exploring photography and the practice of walking, which was part of the 2010 Urban Encounters Festival, in partnership with the CUCR, Goldsmiths, University of London and Tate Britain. In 2011/12 he is curating ‘City to Sea’ with Rebecca Locke, with the support of Urban Encounters and the CUCR. This project brings together artists, photographers and social scientists to present visual projects and sociological research, which explore how regeneration and planning processes, tourism, migration, collective memory, visual archives and arts interventions can transform social perceptions and geographical links between cities, coastal towns and surrounding regions worldwide.

He continues to work on projects in Dubai, UAE that discover links between spatial and architectural development, migration and social mobility in the Emirate.  In collaboration with activist and researcher, Dr Moustafa Traore, Openvizor and BGA in Paris, France, he is working on a further project exploring how visual and oral histories connect with daily life through acts of cooperation. Political institutions use historical photographs of everyday life to visualise and create specific social histories and commemorate public memories. This project considers how collective memories form and influence contemporary visual realities, legal procedures and pictorial archives and utilises photographic, participatory processes and architectural spaces to trigger collective or public memories from within the French-West African population the 19th arrondissement, thus activating new oral and visual discourse about migration, spatial division, city planning and regeneration processes, social conflict/cohesion, assimilation and integration in contemporary Paris, its suburbs and within French society.