Orphanage
I made my first trip to orphanages in late 2000 with Buckner Orphan Care to St. Petersburg, Russia. I remember watching a broadcast about Romanian orphanages over a decade earlier and I expected to find similar desolate spaces and desperate children. I was surprised after meeting sweet children who, in spite of, or perhaps, because of, some tough and unfortunate circumstances, exhibited a quiet strength and an understated sense of dignity. I woke up one morning to a snowy St. Petersburg backdrop and had a long, cathartic cry. I thought I would come home with predictable photojournalist-type pictures but after being there I had no desire to make those images. Instead I wanted to make pictures that would dignify the children and give them something back.
This work has been ongoing for over three years and includes work from Russia, Romania, India, Guatemala, and Kenya. I have tried to avoid images about poverty or pity that are laced with sentimentality. These images are the polar opposite. They are about that quiet strength. It is important to me that the everyday textures and the feel of the rooms is given equal weight - the institution itself speaks as much as the children.
About Misty Keasler
Misty's parents granted her wish for a camera on her 7th birthday with a Polariod camera. She made images of family and friends but her focus was acting for the stage. She followed that dream for years but after two years of study at a conservatory in Chicago, the school let her go with the implication she would be better off pumping gas than persuing the theatre. Devastated, she came home to Texas and picked up her camera again. While taking a photography class at community college she followed heroin junkies in Dallas. That documentary gained national attention and she chose to leave the theatre altogether in persuit of making pictures.
Two years later she graduated from Columbia College Chicago. Her work leans heavily on a documentary tradition and much of it is from several places around the world. She has recently returned from living in Japan for eight months. In 2003 she won the Lange-Taylor Prize with writer Charles D'Ambrosio to make a documentary about the Guatemala City Dump. Her work has been published in Harpers, Tokion, Nest, Newsweek, Fortune, DoubleTake, Texas Monthly and the book 25 Under 25 American Photographers. Keasler was included in PDN's 30 in 2003. She has exhibited work at Photographs Do Not Bend (Dallas), the Houston Center for Photography, the Jones Center for Contemporary Art (Austin, TX), the Galveston Arts Center, and Women and their Work (Austin, Texas). Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Fine Art in Houston, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art, Japan. She currently lives in downtown Dallas.