The Late Kenny Rogers Was Not Only a Country Crooner and Chicken Chain Owner—He Was Also an Adept Photographer. See His Images Here

Kenny Rogers, who died at age 81 this
weekend, was many
things: a country crooner with a knack for pop crossovers, a
made-for-tv actor, a gambler who knew when to hold ‘em and when to
fold ‘em, and a proprietor of a ring of chicken restaurants. But
who knew that he was an accomplished photographer as
well?    

A decorated musician known for
pushing country into the mainstream, packing arenas and topping
radio charts along the way, Rogers was also a devoted photog. His
lifelong love of the medium became a bona fide practice in the
early 1980s when he began taking portfolio portraits of his
then-wife, model Marianne Gordon, and her friends. He went on to
study with John Sexton, a landscape photographer who once worked as
an assistant to Ansel Adams, and with renowned portraitist Yousuf
Karsh.

“I am an impulsive obsessive,”
he told Sports and
Entertainment Nashville in 2013. “I impulsively get involved with
something, and then I get obsessed with it. So that’s what happened
with photography.”

Rogers took his large-format
camera across the country for what would become the photo
book Kenny Rogers’
America, a tour of US
landmarks that was published in 1986. He followed that up
with Your Friends and
Mine, a collection of
portraits of Lucille Ball, Elizabeth Taylor, and other celebrities,
a year later. 

At the Academy of Country Music
Awards in 2004, Rogers set up his camera backstage to take photos
of the industry’s famous faces, including Reba McEntire, Tim
McGraw, and his lifelong friend and collaborator, Dolly Parton. The
portraits were collected in his third and final photo
book, This Is My
Country, self-published
in 2005.

Among Rogers’s artistic
accolades include an Honorary Masters of Photography from the
Professional Photographers of America in 2014 and the inaugural
Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Photography Hall
of Fame and Museum in St. Louis in 2017. 

See some of the gambler’s most
famous photos below.

The post The Late Kenny Rogers Was Not Only a Country
Crooner and Chicken Chain Owner—He Was Also an Adept Photographer.
See His Images Here appeared first on artnet News.