Kat Swansey is an Americana photographer based in Texas. She is the author of Texas Textures, a 144 page photo-book with over two hundred photos, and Way Out West. She picked up her first camera at the age of 13 and has been in love with photography ever since. Kat’s photographs are taken with a wide variety of film — from grocery store emulsions to professional grade stocks — creating vibrant images that leave no question about the beauty in Texas’ vast blue skies and rugged exterior.
Kat was born and raised in a small town in Central Texas and has dedicated her work to photographing abandoned structures, ghost towns, and rural communities that line the backroads of Texas. Her work has been compared to photographers such as Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, and those famous for the New Topographics moment — high praise for a gal from the country! Kat was featured on NPR’s Texas Standard and her work has been highlighted in Alcalde Magazine, Pellicola Magazine, Revolog’s film stock book, All Through a Lens, Narcity.com, Fstoppers, and numerous online publications. You can also find her in the San Antonio and Brenham Public Libraries.
Kat has started working on the second volume of her book, Texas Textures, and will document and share the process here on Substack. Subscribe to get behind the scenes updates on her book, photography projects, and you might even find some of her newest photographs being shared here from time to time (long before they make it to Instagram, anyway…).
