I opened up the Sunday paper and flipped to the S.A Life section. Right away, I was enamored with the image on the front of it's cover. A young girl, about the age of 6, with a large snake wrapped around her shoulders. She stares right into the camera lense while holding a rosary necklace in her two hands. Behind her stands a statue of a saint but it has been blurred. The image is called "Necklace" and was done by a Beaumont photographer named Keith Carter. He has been taking images since he was around 20 years old, taking after his mother who used to do commercial children's photography in their home. He stated that he never used to be interested in photography until one day he actually "looked" at one of his mother's images. Then he tried it and she complimented him and he never looked back! He is now 61 and has images in different galleries and shows constantly. I really enjoy how he manipulates the photographs so that they are dream-like and the focus is where he wants it. Many of his images are of children but he adds a sense of "darkness" to them. If you didn't get the paper you can google him---he is very interesting!
One of my favorites and a Texan...
ReplyDeleteOne thing that really stood out to me, as illustrated by his work, was the importance of *how* you present your ideas. I researched Carter's work online and found the images to be interesting, but I got bored of them while trying to navigate through his site. They're not well organized, nor is any of the additional information about him or a nice description of his work easily located. From his website, it just seemed like the selective focus so predominant in his images wasn't so much a conceptual idea as a gimmick, and that bothered me.
ReplyDeleteI also checked out his book "Fireflies" from the JPL. It was here that I was enchanted! The book presents his images cleanly, and adds enough information at the beginning to really allow you to be engaged in his work. In the book, the selective focus is more obviously an idea, meant to emphasize certain things and de-emphasize other aspects of the image, instead of just a photo-trick that he uses to make them look "cool." He also manages to take images of children that aren't overly "awwww kids! how cute," which is really hard to get away from.
I'm glad you saw these, Bianca, I had totally forgot to tell you about him!