Quotes by
Keith Carter

I think the equipment you use has a real, visible influence on the caracter of your photography. You're going to work differently, and make different kinds of pictures, if you have to set up a view camera on a tripod than if you're Lee Friedlander with handheld 35 mm rangefinder. But fundamentally, vision is not about which camera or how many megapixels you have, it's about what you find important. It's all about ideas.

Sharpness is overrated.

At a fundamental level photography is much like pointing, and all of us occasionally point at things: look at that, look at that sailboat, look at that tree, etc. etc.

I like small things, I like small moments that are almost elliptical, that are not necessarily linear; they’re natural things that happen in the world, but if you look at them from a slight angle there’s more than meets the eye.

In the history of photography, one process has always replaced another. The tumultuous realignment that's going on in the photography now is really just a natural evolution. The irony is that none of the processes that have been replaced have disappeared. More people than ever are practicing every approach to shooting and printing.

I don't just look at the thing itself or at the reality itself; I look around the edges for those little askew moments-kind of like what makes up our lives-those slightly awkward, lovely moments.

I live in a small place more urban centers make fun of, where art is not necessarily the first thing in most people’s minds, and I thought: Gee, I don’t need to go in some exotic locations to make a meaningful picture, why don’t I just play like I came from China and I was transplanted into this culture, with this people and this language and this landscape and this architecture and this music and all these animals I’ve never seen before... why don’t I try to belong to my own place and make pictures that I really would like to make. I started doing that and it was the first time that anybody started paying attention to my work.

I like what Wallace Stevens said: “Poetry must almost successfully resist intelligence.” I just change the word “poetry” to “my photographs.”