Artist Profile: Roy Inman

Roy Inman

12625 S Parker Terrace
OLATHE, KS 66061

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Bio:

Roy Inman’s “checkered photography career” as he whimsically calls it, began in earnest at age 15 when his first published picture appeared in the now-defunct Kansas City Kansan newspaper. It was a basketball shot of Northwest Junior High classmate Roger Johnson making a layup. Inman had begun shooting sports pictures after he broke two vertebrae while doing what is now called the long jump, but in that era was un-politically correct called the broad jump. End of track career. He photographed all through high school for the Wyandotte Pantograph newspaper and freelanced for the Kansan, the Kansas City Star and for anyone else who pay for his services. Four years of college were paid for mostly by freelance photography, but by grad school time he had the benefit of a working spouse. He shot Mizzou football for the United Press International while he earned an MA. Seventeen years at the KC Star as a city desk general assignment shooter and as photo director of the old Star Sunday Magazine, a failed whole wheat bakery business in Colorado later, he wound up back in KC where he has been freelancing ever since. He has photographed for a variety of publications, including Better Homes and Gardens, the New York Times, Ebony, Washington Post and numerous local clients. He has photographed or contributed to more than a dozen books, including his most recent Kansas City’s Union Station: Reflections After 100 Years, a compilation of his 70,000-picture documentation of the restoration of Union Station. His widely circulated image of the Kansas City Royals World Series Rally crowd has sold more than 30,000 prints.