Kennedy Bradshaw (~1900 - 1981)
Kennedy Bradshaw was born in Cornwall, England. He became a journeyman mechanic at Rolls Royce at age thirteen and then joined his uncle’s engineering firm in Manchester. He arrived in Canada in 1939 when he jumped ship in Halifax, but he then returned to England. He was working for Fairley Aviation in England during the Second World War, testing battle aircraft. His wife and two children were killed during a blitz.1)
Bradshaw returned to Canada legally and worked at Falconbridge mine in Sudbury, Ontario.2) He lived near Dawson and then moved to Elsa.3) He was hired at United Keno Hill Mines in 1952. He spent thirty years there, documenting everyday life in the community through his photographs.4) He deserves a place in the ranks of Vancouver's internationally acclaimed photo realists, but he thought of himself as a working man with a hobby. Bradshaw usually worked with a 35mm Leica and used both B&W and colour stock.5) He used transparencies and artificial light, advanced techniques for the time.6)
A bank manager in Elsa was going to make a calendar of his prints and a large number of his images were destroyed in a fire. The current collection is 200 slides. Sixty print images were curated by Yukon photographer Robin Armour and opened at the Yukon Arts Centre Gallery. 7) The exhibition Yukon Friends was first shown in Whitehorse in 1988.8)