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Keith Carter’s new book celebrates five decades of memories

At 320 pages, with 250 photographs, “Keith Carter; Fifty Years” is an epic tome that serves as an autobiography of the Beaumonter’s formidable career. The book is arranged so the images shift between years seemingly at random.

“It was my idea to not make it a chronological layout, and my theory is that memory doesn’t work that way,” Carter said. “It jumps back and forth in time.”

Carter is a master storyteller, plucking moments from the great narrative of life, and his connection to people’s stories is evident on every page of the book.

“It’s been a beautiful journey, but the things that work best for me is when I can, let’s use the word ‘feel’ or ‘think’ — there’s some sort of emotional connection here, be it historic, be it personal, be it the time of day and the way the light falls on a dog or a woman’s face, all kinds of things” he said. “It’s those images that have secrets in them, metaphors or implied narratives. They’re more than what you look at, at first glance.

“I like to work in the real world, so my photos take place in the real world. It’s just sometimes you skew the perspective a little bit and you leave it to the viewer to either want to pay attention to it, or to walk by — it’s a busy world.”

The photographs are his autobiography, Carter, who is a lecturer and Walles Chair at Lamar University, said.

“It’s how I spend my money, my time and my love,” he said.

Carter’s work is very much a love letter to Southeast Texas, where he grew up, but more than that, it is an exploration of people’s stories. His first book, “Uncertain to Blue,” is a collection of photos taken in small towns he visited with his late wife Pat.

“That whole group of pictures that became that book was a learning experience,” he said. “I didn’t even know it but I was learning to become myself. It was something that my wife would enjoy and something we could do together, and my mandate was to make one photograph in each of these quirky-named places, because wherever there were people there were lives of the spirit. There was agriculture, there was architecture, there was family histories, there were unsung heroes in every little place.

“Doing that project, doing one photograph and trying not to make it the name of the town — I mean Ding Dong, what are you going to do with that kind of thing — it made me enlarge my subject matter. It made me find significance in smaller things that I, at the time, didn’t know the significance of. It led to so many other opportunities, because that book went around the country.”

After the success of Uncertain,” Carter said he decided his next project would focus on East Texas on the corridor of the Sabine River and its stories.

“I thought, ‘What I have here is white Anglo-Saxon protestants, African American imagination, Hispanic culture and mythology, Vietnamese industry, rednecks, Cajuns — everything in a rural microcosm, with all of our histories,’” he said. “I likened them to things that happened everywhere in the world. The same kinds of stories — they were just having them in small communities.

“The other thing, and this is important, those first couple of projects, Blue Man” and “Uncertain to Blue,” I did those primarily because I could. I didn’t need tons of money or grants. I could get this work done. That was a big difference. It was something that I felt compelled to do.

“The irony is it’s led me all over the world, it’s opened up areas, led me to things I never expected — but it’s because I paid attention, primarily, to roots. And everybody has them.”

Carter’s career has seen him travel the globe. One striking photograph in the book is of a man, his head shrouded in a ball of light, with a swirling wisp of what seems like smoke rising above him. It was taken in Havana, Cuba, but could easily have been taken around the corner from his Beaumont home.

“If my photographs are successful, to me, you’re not exactly sure where it was made — it’s not based on the place,” he said. “It’s not based on a great city. The Eiffel Tower is the Eiffel Tower — you know where you are. But if I walk down the street in London and I made a photograph that was universal, you wouldn’t know where it was — it’s about us all.”

Carter’s past books have generally centered around a theme or timespan, so “Fifty Years” is a different way of presenting his work.

“Basically, I’m thrilled and pleased with everything,” he said. “I gave this a lot of thought. There were decisions, to be made, such as not to include my color work because the bulk of my work has been black and white, but I have a significant interest in color, too. There was decisions along those lines.

“There were other things, too. I did a whole series of photograms. When my wife, Pat, became ill, the medicine she had to take made her eyes tear up, so we went into the darkroom and blotted her face with photographic paper, and they actually came out. They were photograms of tears, shadow pictures, and shadow pictures are the very first images we have in the history of photography. I think now I wish I had included some of those — they’re pretty esoteric but I thought they were significant in the anthology of 50 years.”

On the early pages of the book, one is confronted by “Paisley,” a close-up portrait of a dancer, her face full of freckles. Carter offered an insight into his process.

“The first time I saw her, I didn’t pay attention to her, she was just a little thin waif,” he said. “And the second time I looked at her, I noticed her face — it was the freckles. Things photograph differently than they look to the eye. Portraits, depending of the lens you use, photograph differently, have different spatial relationships. In her case, it was those wonderful freckles. It’s not a pretty face at first, it’s haunting face.

“You pull the camera in close, and I use short depth of field so there’s very little in focus in the background. You tell them not to smile and after a time, the eyes begin to change — the eyes always change. And if you don’t talk to them too much, they start to become themselves rather than what they think you want. That’s what happened with her.”

The photograph titled “1972” was shot in Beaumont sculptor David Cargill’s studio and features Carter’s wife Pat just before they got married. Carter said he forgot about the negative for 40 years until Hurricane Rita. As he was sorting through a damaged storage area, Carter found a cache of negatives in polyurethane sleeves from the ’70s that had been water damaged and were stained and mildewed. He decided to develop the negative anyway. The resulting image has a surreal quality.

“That’s basically time, moisture, weather, silver that all combined to make something new,” he said. “The distressing part of it, I wish I could replicate. I tried all kinds of things. I buried negatives, I burned them. I tried everything but I couldn’t get it to work.”

There are many images that particularly resonate for him, such as “Fireflies,” the photograph that established Carter’s reputation and changed his life, he said. A 1979 portrait of Pat is another favorite. And “Wedding Ring,” which features a 91-year-old man who is dying and his 88-year-old wife’s hand resting gently on his head to comfort.

“But they are more emotional for me than objective,” he said.

As Carter leafs through the pages of “Fifty Years,” the stories he has sought to tell combine to become another story — his story.

“I look back at this (book) and I’m just amazed at the mystery of it all, how it evolved,” he said. “While it’s evolving you don’t think about it. It’s just what you do or need to be doing. Then you look back and you think, ‘My goodness.’”

“Keith Carter: Fifty Years” is published by University of Texas Press. Cost is $65.

Story by Andy Coughlan, ISSUE editor