Richard Kagan is a Philadelphia photographer and former furniture maker who began as a street photographer before pawning his camera to buy woodworking tools. Following apprenticeships, Kagan opened his furniture workshop where he made and exhibited furniture and taught at the Philadelphia College of Art. Twenty years later, an injury ended that career and brought him back to photography, where he had first begun.
Since 1990, Kagan has had solo photography exhibitions in the United States, Great Britain, and South America. His work is in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Woodmere Art Museum, State Museum of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware, Lehigh University, and the Washington Convention Center, among others.
Statement:
Hungering for images, I spend my days slowly, very slowly, traversing trails through the forest. I am transfixed by the bent twisted branches of the Southern Live Oaks. Fifty years ago, it was a related species, the California Live Oak, that first inspired my love for these creatures—yes, they are creatures, these slow-moving beings of profound essence and beauty rooted in the eternal. Within their tremendous energy, the trees are imbued with a great and humble stillness. How I wish my photographs contained even a fraction of the wonder and grace they exhibit
