A RIVER MADE OF TIME AND MEMORY
BY SUSAN KEISER

PRESENTED BY Click! Photography Festival
OCTOBER 2018

“Rivers are one of the abiding metaphors for the human condition. They begin as mountain trickles, grow deep and powerful, spread wide and calm, until at the end, they open their mouths to the sea. We usually envision them as flat blue ribbons, but they are deep and layered. While the current flows inexorably in one direction, its changeable speed cycles objects from surface to bed, creating a second, unseen river of memories. One can never step in the same river twice, just as the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves grow and change over time. My photographs describe my world, not the day-to-day of it, but the sun-born visions and night-bound terrors that memories create and re-create but can’t be seen or understood until pictured.
I work with a family of four-inch dolls, mass-produced over six decades ago. Intuitive, improvised, my photographs are created entirely in-camera and in available light.”
-Susan Keiser

Susan Keiser is a fine art photographer whose work reflects her long experience in the arts and horticulture. Painter/poet, gardener/naturalist, writer/editor; she has always been concerned with the real-world expression of memories, dreams, and conceptual ideas.

Her photographs have been exhibited widely both domestically and abroad, in solo shows at The Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, and The Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, and in juried group shows at venues including The Center for Fine Art Photography, CO; Los Angeles Center of Photography; PH21 Gallery, Budapest Hungary; Texas Photographic Society, Houston; Baxton Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; the Cleveland Print Room; and the Berlin Foto Biennale.

The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, Keiser attended Pomona College and holds a BFA in painting from The Cooper Union and a diploma from The New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture.