About the Photographer

Kendall Nelson lives in Sun Valley, Idaho with her husband and thirteen-year-old daughter. She left a promising career at a television network in Los Angeles, California after a single trip to Texas to photograph working cowboys. It was this trip that spurred her fascination with the west and inspired her photographic book Gathering Remnants, A Tribute to the Working Cowboypublished in 2000.

Nelson’s photographic images of cowboys have been exhibited in museums and art galleries nationwide and have been featured by numerous publications, including National Geographic Online,Camera Arts, Photo District News, Peterson’s Photographic, and USA Today.

Following her photographic book, Nelson directed and produced the award-winning documentary film also titled Gathering Remnantsabout the culture and psyche of modern day cowboys (nominated for best documentary by the Documentary Channel in 2011.)

With over 20 years experience in television and film, Nelson has honed her skills and made a lifelong commitment to bringing about awareness through her work. This commitment first began when she set off to capture a dying breed – the cowboy.

In addition to making movies, she is an activist for the causes she cares most about including health freedom, simple living and the real food movement. These passions developed as a result of her becoming a mother and caring deeply about the future of our children. Part of Nelson’s daily activism includes writing for the Weston A. Price Foundation (dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet.) 

Nelson is currently working on her most recent passion project, a film about simplicity parenting featuring best-selling author and parenting guru Kim John Payne and multi-platinum singer-songwriter, Jewel Kilcher. She is also in development on a documentary about the wonderful world of microbes and how they affect our planet and us as humans. 

Nelson graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1990 and then studied at Brooks Institute of Photography the following three years. Since then, she has been fortunate enough to travel the world both taking pictures and making films.

Nelson’s early travels included two trips to Mongolia with the Western Folk Life Center in Elko, Nevada. There she photographed a cultural exchange where real working cowboys/singers interacted with Mongolian herdsmen/throat singers – sharing what they each know and love about the “cowboy” way of life.

Nelson has also photographed for organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), for whom her images from Africa were auctioned in support of maternal health and equal opportunities for girls and women. 

Nelson is honored to be sponsored by Women Make Movies, the celebrated multi-cultural, non-profit media arts organization that facilitates the making of films by and about women. In addition, she is a proud member of the International Women’s Forum, which works to build better global leadership across careers, continents and cultures by connecting the world’s most preeminent women of significant and diverse achievement.

Nelson has worked as a still photographer for Allan and Company for the past twenty-two years taking pictures of celebrities and the business elite. While in Los Angles, she worked as a producer on more than 20 television commercials, directed PSAs, produced 18 segments for a kids baseball show titled In the Zoneand was the assistant director for the NFL Pre-Game Showat Fox Sports.