Keith Carter: “Ghostlight”

By Donna Tennant

Redbud Arts Center, Houston, Texas

Exhibition continuing through April 27, 2024

April 13, 2024

Keith Carter, “Crossing,” 2019, 24 x 24”. All images courtesy of Redbud Arts Center, Houston

Keith Carter’s photographs of his native East Texas are moody and mysterious. Bathed in ethereal light, the subjects of these archival black-and-white prints range from owls, white egrets, and wild boars to moss-draped cypress trees and the waters of the swamps and bayous that comprise these southern wetlands. The title, “Ghostlight,” is also the name of Carter’s 15th book, a collection of 100 photographs taken over the past decade in the Big Thicket National Preserve that is home to, in Carter’s words, “the otherworldly spirits of swamps, marshes, bogs, baygalls, bayous, and fens.”

Keith Carter, “Starry Night,” 2021, photograph, 16 x 16”

These atmospheric photographs are far removed from Carter’s early work, which reflected the influence of Walker Evans, Henri Cartier Bresson, and others. Among the most compelling images is “Crossing,” which depicts a wild sow and her piglet pausing on a path under a dominating canopy of vine-covered trees, trailing Spanish moss, and fanlike ferns. The silvery light filtering through the dense flora lends a ghostly ambiance to the scene. Carter’s use of high contrast gives his images an emotional intensity that transforms them from ordinary photographs to visual reveries.

Keith Carter, “Oak Mott Study #2,” 2021, 24 x 24”

“Egret in Flight” is as austere as “Crossing” is complex. A single white egret in flight is positioned near the top of a textured field that resembles an aquatint etching with tonal areas punctuated by faint lines. “Starry Night” is an evocative photograph of a car on a country road under a triangle of dark sky filled with stars. The car is dwarfed by the immense firmament, its headlights paling in contrast to the brilliance overhead. The foreground and highway are dark, while the treetops create a lacy pattern where they meet the sky. Carter conveys the experience of traveling a back road at night — isolated and cocooned.

Keith Carter, “Rookery Study #2,” 2019, 16 x 20”

Many of Carter’s photographs are images of water mirroring the pervasive moss, stately cypress trees, and expansive heavens. Timed exposures of leaves stirring in the breeze create areas of impressionistic soft focus. Carter captures the essence of a place that is so familiar to him. According to the artist, a talk he heard in his twenties by screenwriter Horton Foote urging his audience to “belong to a place” inspired him to focus on East Texas folklore and culture, as well as its exotic flora and fauna. He began reading such Southern writers as Harper Lee, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty. This new book begins with a gothic short story by Bret Anthony Johnston about the “Saratoga Light” for which “Ghostlight” is named. This mysterious light is reputed to lurk in the swamps and is said to be the ghost of a decapitated railroad worker holding up a lantern by which to search for his lost head.

Keith Carter, “Earth Moon Water,” 2013, 24 x 24”

The hint of melancholy that pervades Carter’s photographs is perhaps due to the vicissitudes of life. Gradually, his imagery becomes more dreamlike and enigmatic as he takes refuge in the swamps and bayous, often accompanied only by his camera. “Ghostlight” is a worthy addition to a body of work spanning over fifty years and more than 100 exhibitions. Carter is a visual poet who transports us to, as he describes it, the “eerily beautiful southern wetlands, with their moss-draped trees and dark water obscuring mysteries below, home to ghost stories and haunting, ethereal light.” His timeless photographs are “… more about what you can’t see than what you can see.” Using the magic and alchemy of his medium, he transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Donna Tennant is a Houston-based art writer who writes reviews for various publications. Over the past 40 years, she has written about art for local and national publications, including Visual Art Source, Houston Chronicle, ARTnews, Southwest Art, Artlies, and the Houston Press. She has a bachelor of arts in art history from the University of Rochester and a master of arts in art history from the University of New Mexico.