Coastal: Limited Edition Prints by Keith Kreeger

I opened a cabinet door at my parents’ home on Cape Cod a couple of years ago. An old medium-format camera sat inside as it clearly had for years. I’m not sure when my father first bought that Pentax 67, but it was roughly thirty years old. I have no idea the last time it was used, but I knew that it had more life in it. When I returned home to Austin in the summer of 2023, I couldn't stop thinking about that camera. 

It has been twenty years since I used a film camera. This past summer, I spent ten days in July exploring, looking, waiting, and shooting. I returned to the Cape for a short visit again in September and did the same. The results are here in my first collection of film photographs, debuting during the Austin Studio Tour. All of my prints are being released as Limited Editions, printed with archival pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper 308 gsm fine art photo paper.

My ceramics and my photography have a lot of parallels even though they are different mediums and may seem unrelated. Both can hold time in their own way. My work in clay has the ability to freeze the movement of the clay. It can hold my touch in the curve of a form. It places each and every decision I make while creating within each piece forever. When my clay pieces are finished, my decisions, my energy, the energy of that day are all forever part of that piece. Each time I unload a kiln I get to see a concrete, three-dimensional result of a simple decision to create something.

While photography is new to my creative life, it holds the same truth for me. It stops time. It shares a moment that I decided was important to share. Like clay, film’s chemicals and the process involved take something ethereal and make it real. It makes something that I can share with the world and continue to make my mark. 

That’s why I have been enamored by creating with film photography. It is not meant to live on a phone. It is not meant to merely be content for a social media feed. It is meant to exist. It is meant to come to life, to live in the real world like my pots have been doing for thirty years.