I had the great opportunity to meet Keith Carter at a function sponsored by Houston Fotofest a few months ago. Keith was someone I had studied before, but never met in person until that night. He was very inspiring, and that’s one reason why I went. I was struck by something he said about persistence. For Keith, persistence more important than talent, passion, good luck or anything else in life. He spoke about his passion for images and the desire to capture them throughout most of his life. He was inspired largely by his mother, who ran a family portrait studio for years as he was growing up.
The presentation inspired me to look at more of his work and I found a copy of his book, Ezekiel’s Horse. The book has been since 2000, but there is enough in it that merits another look and a few additional thoughts. John Wood wrote an introduction to the book. “Keith Carter’s genius is that he can photograph what we have all seen but make us see something we have never seen before.” The same has been said of other photographers, but it’s still a pretty rare quality today when images are omnipresent.
As you might expect, the book is about horses, or at least one man’s perception of horses and how important they are to humans. It has close to a couple of hundred images in a square format. The captions suggest meaning, but are not a definitive statement of how the photograph is meant to be taken. One example, “Goodbye To A Horse,” can be taken a couple of ways, but generally carries a sad tone of the image. Another, entitled rubenesque, shows a horse lying on a stable floor. A newborn colt suggests the fresh and ongoing mystery and cycle of life.
Not all photographs are, strictly speaking, limited to horses. There are a few of individuals who work with horses: riders, stable girls, even a young boy captured by the charm of a horse. A few images are statutes of horses or wooden carvings of them. Keith uses selective focus in a large portion of these images. This is a technique which is clearly not arbitrary; it is a deliberate attempt to focus the attention on part of the frame while suggesting, in a subtle tone, something else in the background. It also allows for a dreamlike quality in many of his images.
The title of the book comes from an experience Keith had while traveling in rural Argentina. There he met Ezekiel, a student at a rural school who had ridden his horse to class. There is a plate in the back of the book that Keith made with Ezekiel, his horse and a half globe on his head. The horse apparently knocked the globe/hat askew, and Ezekiel’s eyes grew wide with surprise. At that moment, Keith snapped the shutter. The image is one which shows the importance of horses to humans throughout the globe. And horses, while common in many parts of the world, never lose their mystery and allure.
“For some years now, I have tried to describe in my photographs a certain commonality among living things, a certain democracy among all creates great and small, “ Keith said. “For me, horses are mythic, grand, elegant, companionable, intelligent, and dangerous.”