POET OF THE ORDINARY
Photographs by Keith Carter

"I think there is an element of magic in photography — light, chemistry, precious metals — a certain alchemy. You can wield a camera like a magic wand almost. Murmur the right words and you can conjure up proof of a dream. I believe in wonder. I look for it in my life every day; I find it in the most ordinary things."
—KEITH CARTER—

This traveling exhibition originates from the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos, which houses the world’s largest Keith Carter collection with over twelve hundred images. Lauded as “a transcendent realist” and “a poet of the ordinary,” internationally acclaimed photographer Keith Carter uses light and chemistry to reveal hidden meanings in the real world. Drawing from the nature of animals, popular culture, folklore, and religion, his pictures explore relationships that are timeless, enigmatic, and mythological. "Poet of the Ordinary: Photographs by Keith Carter" brings together sixty photographs that represent the range and development of his work since the 1970s and includes images from Keith Carter Photographs: Twenty-Five Years (UT Press, 1997); A Certain Alchemy (UT Press, 2008), and his Imagining Paradise series.

KEITH CARTER holds the endowed Walles Chair of Visual and Performing Arts at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and among his many honors are the Texas Medal of Arts Award, the Lange-Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and the Regent’s Professor Award from the Texas State University System. His previous books are: Fireflies (UT Press, 2009), Opera Nuda (Lodima, 2005), Holding Venus (Arena, 2000), Bones (Chronicle, 1996), Heaven of Animals (Rice, 1995), Mojo (Rice, 1992), The Blue Man (Rice, 1990), From Uncertain to Blue (Texas Monthly, 1988; reprinted UT Press, 2011), and three from the Wittliff’s Southwestern & Mexican Photography series: A Certain Alchemy (UT Press, 2008), Ezekiel’s Horse (UT Press, 2000 ) and Keith Carter Photographs: Twenty-Five Years (UT Press, 1997). In addition to his large archive at the Wittliff, Carter’s work is included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the George Eastman House.

Al Images ©Keith Carter, Courtesy of the Wittliff Collections, Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos

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