...make a photograph more beautiful...
I try to answer Garry Winogrand’s question “How do you make a photograph more beautiful than what was photographed” by reinterpreting my personal photographs with drawings. This allows me to emphasize specific elements of the scene that initially captured my attention.
Sposalizio Castiglione Fiorentino, 2020, Geoffrey Keillor
Terminales, 2020, Geoffrey Keillor
Quotidien
Like Winogrand, I deliberately select images that are everyday experiences – walking in a street, waiting for a bus, sitting in a park.
"Sposalizio Castiglione Fiorentino" shows smokers and others waiting in a piazza outside a wedding in an Italian hilltop town.
"Terminales" depicts a bus terminal in Panama City, Panama.
London Bus Stop from Women are Beautiful, 1967, Garry Winogrand
Text as Narrative
For “Nueva Generacion” and “Terminales,” I included words painted on walls that define vertical space but resist adding specific meaning to the image. I use text as a “caption” in the absence of a specific narrative.
Nueva Generacion, 2018, Geoffrey Keillor
Solitary
I am inspired by Edward Hopper’s and Peter Doig's depiction of solitary figures (even when they are actually in a crowd).
In Peter Doig's Laperyouse Wall, an anonymous man with a pink umbrella walks down a street accompanied only by the shadow he casts. This is the same look I try to achieve with Nueva Generacion.
The phrase "Nueva Generacion" was Pepsi marketing in Latin America in the 1980s.
Lapeyrouse Wall, 2004, Peter Doig - MoMA
"Magical Realism"
Tony Dondo, 2020, Geoffrey Keillor
For “Tony Dondo” I placed bench-sitters from a public park in a composition that combines Buonarroti’s “Doni Tondo” and Winogrand's "New York World's Fair."
Holy Family, known as the “Doni Tondo”, 1515, Michelangelo Buonarroti - Uffizi
New York World’s Fair, 1964, Garry Winogrand
The Estate of Garry Winogrand/Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco