keith
Bio
Keith Prue picked up his first camera at age fourteen in England where he was born and raised, and his father patiently passed on the darkroom magic of traditional black and white film processing. In his late teens, he developed other interests, so photography took a backseat. However, he always had a camera loaded with color film at hand during his extensive travel adventures (living and working on four continents and traveling to more than fifty countries), but his pictures were no more than a sweet record.
Around the time that digital cameras became main-stream, Keith attended workshops in the USA and overseas with internationally acclaimed master photographer Ernesto Bazan. This was a kick-start transition into the black and white digital world, and he fell in love with the medium in a whole new way. This was followed by a two-year period studying with the late Ben Lifson, one of the world’s most prominent photography writers and critics.
Keith has exhibited online and shown in group exhibitions in the USA and Mexico. His photographs are held in private collections in the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, UK and France. Currently he resides in Rhode Island, USA, and is an Art League Rhode Island Elected Artist.
Artist Statement
My art is my escape into a different place of being. It’s very much a meditative experience for me and enables me to detach and view the world as a passive witness. In the early phase of my digital experience, I would spend countless hours as a flâneur, walking and capturing life. Present to what was unfolding in front of me, without preconception I would respond to what I saw and take pictures of fleeting moments.
More recently my work has taken a thematic approach, capturing the essence of the place rather than simply responding to presented moments. It’s a subtle shift, but one that is important for me to recognize and respond to.
The message in my work is to take time to stop, to look, to see, to really see. This is why me website is called one seeing. This is a reference to both me (the individual one) seeing, but also to consciousness (the collective oneness) seeing. Ultimately, they are one and the same—so when someone looks at one of my pictures and sees what I saw, there is a profound connection on a deep spiritual level. I very much like the way Bill Brandt, explained it "We look at a thing and believe we have seen it. And yet what we see is often only what our prejudices tell us to expect to see, or what our past experiences tell us should be seen, or what our desires want to see. Very rarely are we able to free our minds of thoughts and emotions and just see for the simple pleasure of seeing. And so long as we fail to do this, so long will the essence of things be hidden from us."