Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Texas Monthly

The illusionist: he's famous worldwide for finding mystery in the ordinary and magic in the mundane. But it was in East Texas that self-taught photographer Keith Carter first developed his dreamlike, haunting style. In his tenth book, A Certain Alchemy, his work is as spellbinding as ever.

Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

Among his earliest memories is waking in the middle of the night from a pallet on the floor to see a small orange safelight above the kitchen sink, where his mother stands. He steps over beside her, then raises himself on tiptoes to watch in wide-eyed wonder as one of her photographic images slowly comes up in the developer. It is magic, indeed it is a miracle--and to this day, my friend Keith Carter has never gotten over it. [paragraph] His father deserted his family when Keith was in preschool. Photography was essentially the only skill his mother knew that might put bread on the table, so she picked up her camera and opened a small studio on Calder Avenue in Beaumont. Her forte was children. She'd run $5.95 specials on the weekends, sometimes photographing as many as sixty kids in a single day, then stay up night after night making the five-by-seven black and white prints in...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!