Brandon Knight

Brandon Knight is a St. Louis creative and former recording artist who released music under the name NEX. His catalog includes the 2021 singles Out the Dark, Revenge, and How I Feel, along with a later appearance on For the Times. The music represents a chapter when Brandon was actively exploring identity, emotion, and self-expression while developing the visual world surrounding NEX.

Brandon and I attended the same high school, although he was four years ahead of me. We became close through our mutual friend Ellis Brodsky, better known as Denny, and that connection grew into years of friendship and creative collaboration. Across numerous shoots, we experimented with portraiture, styling, locations, and ideas designed to reflect both Brandon’s music and the evolving identity he was building around NEX.

What always stood out was Brandon’s willingness to keep exploring. Each shoot gave us another opportunity to try something new, whether that meant changing the environment, developing a stronger visual concept, or finding a different way to communicate who he was becoming. The photographs were never only promotional images; together, they formed a record of a young artist learning how he wanted to be seen.

Brandon’s life has since expanded far beyond music. His professional path moved into data and analytics, bringing the same curiosity and problem-solving mindset into a completely different field. His public professional profile describes five years of experience managing data solutions that support analytics, with work at Bunzl Distribution North America. He also completed a Machine Learning Specialization through DeepLearning.AI after attending Webster University.

That evolution is an important part of why these photographs matter to me. They preserve a creative chapter without suggesting that a person must remain frozen inside it forever. Brandon grew from a high-school connection into a close friend and frequent collaborator, and I had the privilege of documenting the years when NEX gave him a space to experiment, perform, and express parts of himself through music.