Kamal Badhey (she/her) is a photographer, educator and independent curriculum designer of South Asian ancestry with an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MS in Museum Education from Bank Street College. Her love for photography started out in her high school darkroom, where she worked out her adolescent existential issues. Her visual storytelling includes both long and short term projects, where she engages in practices of portraiture, art, ethnography, fashion, and documentary. She is a member of the Urban Photographers Association and South Asian Women’s Creative Collective.  She is interested in ideas of dispersal, diaspora and origin pilgrimages and uses photography and oral storytelling to stitch together stories. Her autobiographical work, Portals and Passageways, an excavation of the life of her great-great grandfather Annam Rathnaiah, became the curricular backbone for her adult education course Family: Reinterpreting the Personal Archive at the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, and for the Teen Academy course, Reconstructing the Family Album at the International Center of Photography. Beyond family work, she is passionate about the poetic narration of underrepresented stories through photography. This work in accessibility has opened channels for teaching and mentorship with youth, teachers in training and senior citizens through the Bronx Documentary Center, Center for Documentary Studies - Duke University, Literacy through Photography - Tanzania, International Center of Photography, Back to the Lab, and the Parsons Scholars Program.  She was a 2018-2019 Claremont Documentary Project Fellow and a 2016-2017 Lewis Hine Fellow.



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