Along with editorial work, Carter has done work for the music industry, including album photos for country artists such as George Strait and Terri Clark.
In the world of fine-art photography, Keith Carter is the real deal. His widely exhibited work is in such collections as the George Eastman House, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Museum. Carter has published eight monographs, and fine-art galleries sell his prints across the United States.
Carter is also at the top of his game as a photography professor and is the Walles Chair of Art at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, where he has received his school's highest teaching honor, the University Professor Award. His career began, however, as a small-town, jack-of-all-trades photographer—a role that Carter credits as an important factor in his success as an artist and photography educator.
"I was always grateful for that experience," Carter says now. "It's a very positive aspect of a young photographer's career. It forces you to learn things, both technically and visually, that you wouldn't necessarily learn in the rarified fine-art world."
Carter inherited the calling from his mother, who photographed families and children in his hometown. When he graduated from college he drifted to the arts, starting out as a picture framer, but quickly setting up a small photo studio. Although he says he wanted to make photographs as an artist "from day one, that wasn't immediately possible in his small community.
Even though Carter doesn't take on many commercial jobs anymore, art directors still seek out his fine-art images for stock photography projects, such as book covers.
Instead, Carter took on every commercial assignment he could, from wedding photography to projects for local refineries to copying old photographs. "But when I made a little money, I would always buy myself some time to work on my own black-and-white photography," he says.
These days, Carter’s thriving career as an artist and professor means he doesn't do much photography for hire anymore, beyond the occasional portrait commission and stock photography request. But things have come full circle for him: After years taking of on commercial jobs to support his aspirations as an artist, book publishers and picture editors, who now seek to use his fine-art photographs for their projects.
When he started to teach photography, he would schedule classes on Tuesday through Thursday and jobs, Friday through Monday. His wife ran his studio, and he employed a full-time assistant for these hectic years, taking on work that included editorial assignments for publications such as Fortune, Time, Esquire, Texas Monthly, Outside and the New York Times Magazine. "Our little cottage industry cranked out a lot of work," he says.
In the classroom, Carter used his upcoming, professional assignment as a topic of discussion. He would ask his students how they would approach the technical and visual solutions to the job. "Anytime you bring to the classroom some depth and width and breadth to your craft or your life, the students will find it useful," Carter observes. "And, of course, they also always wanted to know how much I would be paid!"
