CATCHING THE UN-CATCHABLE
" I'm telling a soul story. When I make a photograph, I am trying to put forth a moment of strength, vulnerability, passion, and pure being-ness. Sometimes those things collide, and it glows with an honesty about our human condition. My photos capture fleeting human moments, those of wonder, excitement, rest, interest, glory, fear, and truth.
There is a mysteriousness about thought, and about feeling and seeing and experiencing that I have always liked. It is ephemeral. There's a strangeness about the way these qualities all bubble up and sparkle away at any given moment. It is divine, and humans and places and spaces seem to carry that all with them. "
Gillian Keller, a self-taught photographer, was born in San Francisco, raised in Montana and Washington, and attended the University of Idaho where she studied painting and mixed media sculpture. Continually fascinated by capturing thought (something which cannot be captured), her painting, sculpture and film work focused on transitions of emotion together with handwriting. She discovered photography in 2005 in her college dorm room, and played with abstract textures and objects for years. After graduating from the University of Idaho, she moved straight back to San Francisco and was given her first DSLR. She taught herself to shoot using manual, and now enjoys exploring concepts of human thought and emotion while living and working in San Francisco's Mission District.
I take a ton of photos. Whether I'm on a fashion shoot, with my friends, on vacation or just walking around the mission, I use both my 'big girl camera' (seen pictured!) and my lowly iPhone with a virgin mary protective case. I snap things that inspire me- things that speak my language. Colors, textures, scenes, people, places - I call them "the new beautiful things." I'm visually obsessed- and I collect these pictures to draw further inspiration from later on.
When the moment feels right, I sit at my computer or with my phone, absorbed In my endless catalogue of photos, sifting for the person and photo to base my collage on (each person in my digital collages are from my own photographs). Perhaps an 'outtake' from one of our many shoots is the thing that strikes my interest, or a photo taken when the model was changing poses. I am looking for something that seems ephemeral, breathy, intriguing. Then I get to work.
Based on the feeling, the mood, the energy of the model and the pose, I pull different colors, textures, and photos to construct a digital collage in Photoshop. Each one goes through hundreds of variations of color combinations, layouts, accompanying floral arrangements or statues, glitterizing, gold leafing and all before I finally declare it "done".
A collage never comes out how I expect- so I never make sketches. Each is spur of the moment- and becomes a shrine to a deity, to a patron saint of the moment, and takes its place on the altar along with the rest.
HOW DID SHE DO THAT?
