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  • Angel Clark: Featured Photographer
  • George Brosi

Angel Clark grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and came to Lexington, Kentucky, in 2000. Her plans were to help a former partner finish his last year of college at the University of Kentucky before moving to Vancouver, British Columbia, and enrolling in film school. Clark got involved in Lexington in concert promotion, public relations, and web design and decided to stay there when her partner decided to re-locate elsewhere. A few years later, Lexington poet and photographer David Cazden traded Clark a Nikon d100 camera for work on his website, and her interest in photography deepened.

In 2008, Jahi Chikwendiu visited Lexington, his hometown where he started his photo-journalism career with the Herald-Leader. He ran into Clark and her Nikon d100 at the 3rd Street Stuff Café. Chikwendiu works for the Washington Post and had just been named the White House News Photographers Association’s Photographer for the Year. He showed Clark a few tricks on her camera, and the relationship grew to the extent that Clark now proudly calls Chikwendiu her “mentor.”

Currently Angel Clark serves as the Director of the Center for hiv Prevention and Education at avol (aids Volunteers, Inc.), in Lexington. She is also involved in the Swallowtail Project of the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association. This is a multi-media effort that includes photographic displays, films, and a variety of other media. With Bianca Spriggs, Clark has formed a production and design company called Parkour! Productions and Media Design. In September, Clark’s first film premiered, entitled “Waterbody,” a contemporary urban fantasy which was inspired by a poem by Spriggs. At its core, Spriggs thinks of this poem and the film as “a narrative about the power of friendship, but also the power of reinvention and the discovery of one’s true identity.”

Angel Clark’s photographs have appeared in pluck!, Kentucky Monthly, and the Lexington Herald Leader. Of her art, Clark says, “I prefer to spend most of my time behind a lens, capturing a spectrum of the human experience. Whether it’s face to face with historic sculptures, abandoned corners of forlorn buildings, or a stranger’s smile, my eye has never met a visage it didn’t like.” [End Page 123]

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