Fayetteville photographer Andrew Kilgore useless at 85

Fayetteville photographer Andrew Kilgore died Monday on the age of 85. Born in Virginia in 1940 and raised in Illinois and Texas, he ultimately settled in Arkansas in 1971, only a few years after he started taking footage. 

Kilgore’s specialty was black-and-white portraiture, and he had a specific curiosity in capturing topics that have been “misunderstood” and residing “on the fringes of American survival,” in keeping with his website. “These are people stripped by birth or by circumstance of the inclination or even the capacity for pretense, and so offer themselves to Andrew’s camera with an openness and vulnerability that is both revealing and affecting.”

Ever prolific, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Kilgore’s oeuvre incorporates roughly 250,000 photos. A 2022 interview with the Walton Arts Center places that quantity at over 750,000. Per the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Kilgore “photographed more than 30,000 people in Arkansas between early 1971 and late 2011.” 

If that feels like an impossibly deep nicely through which to wade, contemplate beginning with this set of arresting images from the ’70s that have been revealed by the Oxford American — together with Kilgore’s commentary — in November. 

And for extra about Kilgore’s life, take a look at these obituaries from Fayetteville Flyer and the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.