KayLynn Deveney was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The first of two children, she came home from the hospital in a new Mercury and a desert wind storm. Though really too pale for the sunny Southwest, KayLynn grew up in Albuquerque, earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico, and became a staff photographer for the Albuquerque Tribune, where she worked for nine years and produced photographic stories on a wide variety of topics.
In 1999 KayLynn, her boyfriend and her cameras crossed the water so that she could attend graduate school in the UK. In 2001, she earned a master's degree in documentary photography at the University of Wales, Newport. KayLynn stayed on in Newport to undertake a practice-based Ph.D. in photography and in 2009 she completed this degree, having focused her studies on the ways contemporary and historical photographic diaries and self-books address myths of domesticity.
KayLynn’s photographic work has been exhibited internationally and is held in permanent collections including those of The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Illinois, Light Work in Syracuse, New York and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.
KayLynn's first photographic book, The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in August, 2007. The book was chosen as an official selection for the Arles Contemporary Book Prize, 2008, selected by PhotoEspana to be shown in "The Best Photography Books" exhibition held at the National Library of Madrid, June and July, 2008, and chosen as one of 20 nominees for the New York Photo Awards "Best Photography Book" award, 2008.
In December 2008, KayLynn received an artist grant from the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation.
KayLynn's second book, All You Can Lose Is Your Heart, was published by Kehrer Verlag in December 2015 and the review in the In Print and Links sections of this website.
In August 2015, KayLynn exhibited work in the Dali International Photography Exhibition in China and was honored to receive the Redpoll Trophy, Best Photo Finalist Award.
KayLynn now lives in Northern Ireland with the boyfriend (who became her husband) and is a full-time lecturer in the Belfast School of Art at the University of Ulster. But in the summer, she returns to New Mexico, her friends, her family, and the wind.