Kim Brundage
Kim Brundage is an award-winning portrait photographer whose work explores identity, presence, and the quiet strength people carry within themselves. Although her professional path was nontraditional, the seeds of photography were planted early, when she first picked up a camera in seventh grade. Over time, that quiet creative voice grew stronger, eventually becoming impossible to ignore.
After many years working in healthcare leadership, Kim found that photography became a way to make sense of her own experiences and connect more deeply with others. What began as a creative outlet evolved into a practice centered on witnessing people in the moment they stop performing and begin inhabiting themselves.
In 2016, as the national climate in the United States grew increasingly divided, Kim created IdentityRVA in Richmond, Virginia, a community portrait and video project inviting participants to share their stories, beliefs, and experiences in their own words. The project affirmed her belief that portraiture can create space for empathy and shared humanity.
Kim now travels throughout the American West creating portraits that explore identity, resilience, and connection to place. Her current body of work, the Diné Women Empowerment Series, is a collaboration with Diné women that honors their strength, sovereignty, and relationship to land and community.
Her residency at The Land With No Name Sanctuary offered time for reflection on artmaking and connection. Surrounded by the quiet power of the desert landscape, Kim experienced photography as a bridge between people—a way of witnessing one another while discovering courage, connection, and truth within ourselves.
Diné Women Empowerment Series
During my artist residency at Land With No Name Sanctuary, I continued developing my ongoing portrait project, the Diné Women Empowerment Series. This body of work honors the strength, sovereignty, and presence of Diné (Navajo) women within landscapes that hold cultural and ancestral meaning. Through intimate portraiture and conversation, the series seeks to create space for each woman to be seen in her full humanity—beyond stereotype or symbol—while acknowledging the deep relationship between identity, land, and lived experience.
My initial goal during the residency was to photograph an additional participant for the series. While that plan ultimately shifted, the time at Land With No Name became equally meaningful in another way. The sanctuary offered a profoundly quiet place for reflection, dialogue, and creative grounding. Kate’s thoughtful support and openness created space to deepen the project's intentions and reflect on the responsibility that comes with documenting stories connected to land and culture. I loved my experience so much that I plan to come back next winter and stay longer.
Residencies like this play an important role in the evolution of the Diné Women Empowerment Series. They allow time not only for image-making, but also for listening, relationship-building, and honoring the trust that participants place in the process. These experiences continue to shape the project's direction as it grows toward future exhibitions, collaborations, and conversations on visibility, identity, and representation.
From the moment Ted and Kate welcomed Jeff and I onto the land, I felt held in a way that allowed my creativity to breathe. The quiet, the openness, the sculptures, the stories that were shared — it all created a container of freedom and possibility. There is something truly rare about land that has no outside noise, no rush, no performance. I could hear my own inner voice again.
Kate and Ted's enthusiasm for the Diné Women Empowerment Series meant so much to me. Not only did they open the sanctuary to this work, but they helped connect me with Chucki and Jaz — and that collaboration will stay with me. The land truly became a secondary subject, exactly as I had envisioned.
My only regret is that we didn’t stay longer. Three days felt like the beginning of something, not the end.