Keith Carter

KEITH CARTER

Keith Carter was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1948, but moved to Beaumont, Texas at the age of 5 and has lived there ever since. His mother, Jane, supported the family as a professional photographer. As a teenager, Carter accompanied his mother on photography tours to small Texas towns, entertaining the children while she took their pictures. He developed his talents as a photographer on his own with advice from David Cargill, an artist and teacher at Lamar University in Beaumont. He received a BBA degree from Lamar in 1970. In 1975, he married Patricia Staton, and while earning a living in Beaumont for many years as a commercial photographer, he never ceased "making art" for himself. From time to time, when they got a bit of money saved up, Pat would insist that Keith take days off to devote himself to his own photographs. Through the years Pat has been his mainstay and constant ally. Today, Keith Carter is an internationally recognized photographer and educator who holds the endowed Walles Chair of Art at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. Called "a poet of the ordinary" by the Los Angeles Times, Carter's haunting, enigmatic photographs have been widely exhibited in Europe, the U.S., and Latin America. His photography has been published in eight major monographs, including two in the Wittliff Gallery Series with UT Press—Keith Carter: Photographs, Twenty-five Years (1997) and Ezekiel’s Horse (2000). The Wittliff Gallery houses the world’s largest Keith Carter collection with over eight-hundred images. Keith and Pat live and work in Beaumont.

PHOTO Keith Carter by Bill Wittliff, 1998 from the Tragaluz series