Self Portrait of Chris Keeney in Colin's Valley, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California
Photographers are like stars in the sky… there are many of the them. But when you look closer, your eye quickly finds certain stars that are unique. I feel that in order to stand out among the vast universe of photographers around the world, you must find a way to shine like no one else. Finding whatever it is you’re passionate about and then doing that to the best of your ability. Following your heart and the passion that drives you to create. Doing this requires imagination, practice, hard work and determination to create artful images which will endure the scrutiny of critics to come.
If the essence of life is change, then I imagine its opposite–immutability–must be a form of death. I see my photography as both an affirmation of and reaction to the inexorable process of growth and decay, the wheel of life: my images try to play with the mystery and absurdity of the permanent state of impermanence facing us in this world, and the kinds of images that catch my eye are themselves always changing, as is my technique as I experiment with the ever-evolving technologies and media available today. To me, a good photograph is a small triumph over time, perhaps not on the same scale as a great poem, but no less thrilling in its own way. To quote Henri Cartier-Bresson: We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.
There’s something that feels noble about that. I also like what Cartier-Bresson said about his personal experience of what it is to do photography: Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It’s a way of life. This seems right to me: the best photography comes from the inner compulsion to capture images, as opposed to stroke one’s ego, and I know that because there is an authenticity I feel in my best moments. And photography does free me, albeit temporarily, from the hamster wheel existence that is a part of life, and as such, it is my own form of shout – that I am alive, that I am open to creation in all its forms, that i know we all pass out of the frame in the end but that only fires my determination to record that we were here and lived and loved…
© 2008 Chris Keeney Photography