Quotes from Keith Carter

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

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 think there is an element of magic in photography — light, chemistry, precious metals — a certain alchemy. You can wield a camera like a magic wand almost. Murmur the right words and you can conjure up proof of a dream. I believe in wonder. I look for it in my life every day; I find it in the most ordinary things.

The full weight and mystery of your art rests upon your relationship to your subject matter.

I don't think science is necessarily incompatible with mystical or spiritual sensibilities. I often weigh them equally in my thinking, which sometimes finds itself into the work.

Your ideas come out of the way you conduct your life.

You are lucky if you have one or two epiphanies in your life, particularly a creative one.

The raw materials of photography are light and time and memory.

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 love the history of photography and one process has always replaced another. However, very, very few have disappeared.

I don't know if I can articulate how I feel. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would make it here.