Teddy Mitchener is the head photographer at House of Fotography, based in Nairobi Kenya. A Washington DC native, Teddy is a self-taught photographer, having picked up his first camera in 1992 under the tutelage of his father, Willie Brown. A fully fledged professional photographer, Teddy earns his living in Kenya primarily as a commercial photographer in the advertising industry and on private commissions.

For Teddy, photography is simply one of the many mediums he uses to express his creativity. A graduate of The Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Teddy credits the institution with broadening the limits of his creativity and instilling in him the love of other art forms such as plaster and stone sculpting, wood work, pencil drawing and painting. The merging of these mediums is what now informs Teddy’s personal projects and inspires his creative photography concepts.

“I picked up photography initially as a means to an end, to capture imagery that I wanted to sculpt, draw or paint, then along the way I found that my love for photography was deepening. It was however not until I relocated to Nairobi in 2009 that I became a fully fledged photographer. Today, Teddy specializes in Commercial and Corporate photography and is an accredited CANON professional photography trainer for the Africa region.

Teddy has now made his foray into the world of art exhibitions, creating conceptual art photography pieces that speak to the social cultural dynamism that he is witnessing in Africa today. His first exhibition was held in Dubai in February 2019, and in Venice in March 2019, both with AKKA Project. He has also staged two exhibitions in Nairobi, for McKinsey & Co and Alliance Francaise Cultural Centre, all in 2019 and will be showcasing his artworks, again with AKKA Project, at the PhotoBasel in September 2020.

Teddy lives in Kenya with his Kenyan-born wife, Sharon, and their two sons aged 7 and 9. Apart from photography, Teddy relishes in watching action-packed movies and as well as spending time playing board games with the family. Teddy and his wife are also marriage counselors at their church, Emmanuel Baptist Church, in Lavington, Nairobi.