Keith Carter

Keith Carter is an internationally recognized photographer and educator. Born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1948,he holds the endowed Walles Chair of Art at Lamar University Beaumont, Texas. He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Regional Survey Grants and the Lange-Taylor Prize from The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In 1997 Keith Carter was the subject of an arts profile on the national network television show, CBS Sunday Morning. In 1998, he received Lamar University's highest teaching honor, the University Professor Award, and he was named the Lamar University Distinguished Lecturer. Eight monographs of his black and white photographs have been published: From Uncertain To Blue, 1988; The Blue Man, 1990; Mojo, 1992; Heaven of Animals, 1995; and Bones, 1996. A mid-career survey, Keith Carter Photographs - Twenty Five Years was published in 1997; Holding Venus and his eighth book, Ezekiel's Horse, were published in 2000. Called "a poet of the ordinary" by the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Carter's haunting, enigmatic photographs have been widely exhibited in Europe, The U.S., and Latin America. They are included in numerous permanent collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the George Eastman House; the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston; and the Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Photography at Southwest Texas State University.

I stumbled across Keith's photos while I was hanging out with some of my friends in Bozeman. They are Photography majors and were working on a project that involved his photos. As I was flipping through them they really caught my interest. My favorite pictures came from a group of his photos called "Talbot's Shadows". Below is a description of this gallery from his website that explains the images.


"Talbot's Shadow"

This series was inspired by my admiration for the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, who invented the positive/negative process from which modern photography is descended. Some of Talbot's earliest experiments involved placing objects (such as a leaf or a fragment of lace) on a piece of sensitized paper and exposing it to sunlight. He called these images "shadow pictures". I have attempted to blend this elegant 19th century process with 21st century techniques.

To create the original image I have used a photographic paper that has been continuously manufactured since the 19th century. Objects were placed on the paper and exposed to light, then treated in arcane chemistry, including gold and platinum toners. The resulting 20x24 image is one-of-a-kind.

Chromogenic prints are then made to translate that unique image into a small, carefully matched edition. This series, called Talbot's Shadow, is printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper.