Keith Carter’s Alchemy
A Certain Alchemy by Keith Carter, is forthcoming (October 2008) in the Southwestern & Mexican Photography Series published by the University of Texas Press. The series originates from The Wittliff Collections, an archival, educational and creative center established at Texas State to celebrate the region’s literary and photographic arts. The Wittliff is the major collector of Carter’s work, with more than 800 of his photographs among its holdings. A fall exhibition and event are being planned to launch the new book.
Pat Carter, Keith’s wife, wrote the introduction; Bill Wittliff, the series editor, contributed the afterword.
Following are excerpts:
Every artist has to find a way to work and a way to keep going. I think Keith does it by faith. He has faith that it is worth doing, and it doesn’t hurt that I think so, too. He also has faith in what he has always called the alchemy of photography. He has thought of photographic processes as a kind of magic ever since the days when he would climb up on a stool in his mother’s darkroom to watch the ghostly images appear in the developing trays.
Lately he seems to feel a subtle loosening of some internal restraints. It is the kind of change that creeps in imperceptibly and is felt only after the fact. It brings the ease and confidence that all humans may feel when they have come far enough to have some faith in their own ability to get through….
Recently I heard him talking to a group of adult workshop participants, offering encouragement and urging them on. “Absolutely anything you can think of is worth trying. Make friends with uncertainty because she will always be sitting on your shoulder and whispering in your ear. The full weight and mystery of your art rests on your relationship with your subject matter.” Listening to him, I realized that he was speaking aloud the mantras he has repeated silently to himself for years, and which he has need of still.
[Certain of Keith’s images] remind you of things you’ve deep down always known but somehow forgotten, because life has a nasty habit of simply becoming too daily, too dependent on thought at the expense of feelings. These photographs fill you up and become a part of your inner life, depending on the depth of your own capacities. The proof is that the first response to the best of Keith’s images — and to all great art — is almost always instantly YES, an instant recognition of that which was already there inside you on some profound connecting thread that runs through the very core of all of us fellow travelers on this spinning globe. That’s how great art in any medium slips past all boundaries of time and space and cultural differences to deliver the goods.
