R. J. Kern is a Minneapolis-based artist whose photographs investigate ideas of home, ancestry, and a sense of place. His portraits focus on intimate, interdependent relationships of animals, people and landscape as a means of exploring how ancestry shapes identity and how myth intertwines with personal history. His camera has led him from an inquiry into his lineage in the farming communities of Scandinavia and Ireland to the examination of similar communities near his home in Minnesota.  

Veronique Wantz Gallery is excited to present our first ever photography show in March 2024 - featuring a solo exhibit of R. J. Kern’s stunning work running from March 8 - April 13, 2024. The show presents highlights in a mini-retrospective format with projects by Kern including: Divine Animals: The Bovidae; The Unchosen Ones; The Best of the Best; and Kern’s newest series, The Last Fair.

Inspired by master landscape painters of the 19th-century, such as Albert Bierstadt and William Holman Hunt, Kern embraces the heightened expressivity of natural and artificial lighting techniques. His photography, frequently described as painterly and lush, often features a saturated palette, thoughtful composition of subject and landscape, and attention to detail in shadows. Upon first observation, his photographs can be mistaken for paintings.

The son of a military family, New York-born Kern grew up living nomadically. He developed an interest in photography in high school, which he continued to pursue. His visual curiosity of the world around him led to a cartography job at National Geographic from 2000-2005. He later worked as a commercial photographer for nearly a decade, gradually pivoting to a fine-art career after being inspired by a trip photographing sheep in the Irish countryside in 2012.

The images in Kern’s award-winning first monograph, The Sheep and the Goats (published by Kehrer Verlag), comprise two bodies of work depicting domesticated animals in landscape settings. The Bovidae: Divine Animals series is set in Kern’s ancestral lands of Ireland, Germany, Norway and Iceland. In the Out to Pasture series, Kern focuses on “retired” show animals in natural setting in his home state of Minnesota.

A subject of continued interest to Kern are local scenes from the Minnesota county fair systems, as well as the Minnesota State Fair. Kern was commissioned as the 2019 Minnesota State Fair commemorative artist, the first photographer chosen to create the fair’s official artwork, which is featured on prints, posters and merchandise. The Last Fair series takes Kern on location around the state to fairs from Carver County to Blue Earth County to Beltrami County, and beyond. He carefully choreographs his scenes with willing participants (and with the help of fork lifts for height and occasional artificial light sources) to achieve the intended shot. Kern reflects: “Last summer [2022], I began setting up large-scale photographs with 4-H kids, animals, and symbols of Americana— a typical county fair with carnival rides, food booths…the stuff kids love, all over-priced, unnecessary, yet joy-filled for the kid at heart. I wasn’t sure what this effort would become but enjoyed the process…Joy often isn’t fully appreciated until gone”—R.J. Kern

Another well-known and acclaimed photographic series of Kern’s, The Unchosen Ones, centers around portraits of a selection of Minnesota 4-H children who did not take home the title of grand champion in livestock competitions at county fairs and the MN State Fair. (Please inquire if interested in seeing available images of work from The Unchosen Ones series).

Kern's work has been presented in a number of publications, including a feature in National Geographic (November 2017), with his series The Unchosen Ones and Out To Pasture.

“Kern’s evocation of nature as a device to understand his own sense of self draws upon historical precedence: the use of animals as metaphor and the pastoral tradition. Yet the artist’s broad concept— his exploration of identity—is firmly grounded in a contemporary context. This tightly knit series of images, which together characterize the author, is common to our age of social media. Kern’s aesthetic, however, emphasizes clarity and projects a warm stillness that is a balm to an overstimulated society. This contrast too—the ties to digital media and the rejection of its characteristics—deepens this pastoral project. Yes, it is a photograph of a goat, but it is also more than that. Just as man’s relationship with the animal world is multifaceted, so too is Kern’s work.”– From the introduction by Lisa Volpe, Associate Curator of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to The Sheep and The Goats