{"id":216710,"date":"2025-10-16T06:56:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T06:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/216710\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T06:56:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T06:56:14","slug":"a-photographer-with-a-cool-and-deadly-eye-diane-keatons-creativity-behind-the-lens-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/216710\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A photographer with a cool and deadly eye\u2019: Diane Keaton\u2019s creativity behind the lens | Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s one of the most memorable scenes<\/a> in Annie Hall: Diane Keaton\u2019s eponymous protagonist chatting with Alvy on the balcony of her apartment. Alvy asks if she took the photographs displayed inside. \u201cThey\u2019re wonderful,\u201d he says. \u201cThey have a \u2026 quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

She dabbles, but would like to take a proper course, replies Annie. Alvy starts waffling about \u201cthe aesthetic criteria\u201d of a \u201cnew art form\u201d (photography has been around for 150 years at this point). Meanwhile, his inner monologue is presented in subtitles: I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n

\u201cAesthetic criteria?\u201d Annie says. \u201cYou mean, whether it\u2019s a good photo or not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the film, during the lobster set piece, Annie snaps Alvy in the kitchen with a Nikon F2 Photomic<\/a>. As with many aspects of her character (her style<\/a>, for example), a love of photography was cribbed from the real-life Keaton. And though for Annie photography is an amateur pursuit, Keaton published multiple pictorial books in her lifetime.<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, travelling from coast to coast, Keaton shot a series of classic American hotel interiors (she was an avid fan of architecture and design) for Rolling Stone. These pictures formed the basis of the monograph Reservations, her first book, published by Knopf in 1980. The blurb<\/a> introduced the actor as \u201ca strong, direct photographer with a cool and deadly eye\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018I shoot the pictures, but I\u2019m not doing it any big way. I just like images\u2019\u2026 Diane Keaton on her photography, alongside one of her Hollywood portraits. Photograph: Diane Keaton\/Rizzoli\/Guardian composite<\/p>\n

The images, monochrome and square and taken on her beloved Rolleiflex, show typical hotel lobbies of the era; their tension between minimalism and maximalism. The ostentatious banquettes and the baroque wallpaper; the solitary Windsor chair in the corner of an otherwise empty space.<\/p>\n

Textures abound: the upholstery of a velvet cocktail sofa; the grain of wood-panelled walls; the reflected sheen of a plastic lamp or rubber plants. The compositions are idiosyncratic, reminiscent of that other Diane \u2013 Arbus. A waiter is cut off at the torso<\/a>; just half of a painting hanging on a wall is allowed into frame; there\u2019s a decapitated statue. If the photographic benchmark for atmospheric, cinematic interiors is the stunning output of Todd Hido<\/a>, Sally Mann<\/a> and William Eggleston<\/a>, then Reservations deserves to be among them.<\/p>\n

Idiosyncratic\u2026 Keaton\u2019s first monograph was of classic hotel interiors Photograph: Diane Keaton\/Knopf<\/p>\n

Keaton\u2019s passion for the visual went back to childhood. She was inspired by her mother, Dorothy Deanne Keaton Hall, a keen collagist<\/a> and photographer herself. For Dorothy, looking was \u201ca dedicated endeavour\u201d. In the foreword for one book, her daughter writes: \u201cThe simple, sturdy, and reliable Brownie Hawkeye camera manufactured by Kodak documented our family from 1949 through 1956.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young Diane cut out pictures of Cary Grant from magazines to make collages. In her 20s, the actor would make large-scale photomontages \u2013 up to seven feet wide<\/a> \u2013 and though she spent a life constantly creating, she characterised herself only \u201cas a person who cuts out paper, throws it up on the wall, or finds old photographs that I see at the swap meet [flea market]\u201d, and wielded her camera unassumingly.<\/p>\n

Annie Hall describes her aesthetic criteria to Alvy thus: \u201cTo me it\u2019s all instinctive. I just try to feel it and get a sense of it; to not think about it so much.\u201d Keaton too<\/a>: \u201cI shoot the pictures, but I\u2019m not doing them in any big way. I just like it. I like images. If I see a tree that looks unusual, I\u2019ll just take a picture of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Striking \u2026 woman attacked by pigeons, Trafalgar Square, London, 1981, by Diane Keaton Photograph: Diane Keaton\/Rizzoli<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m addicted to photographs and photography books,\u201d she told the Hollywood Reporter<\/a> in 2023. She had more than 60 scrapbooks<\/a> of disparate accumulated images and kept Sophie Calle\u2019s Blind<\/a> on her nightstand, to remind her of the magic of sight; that looking is a dedicated endeavour.<\/p>\n

In an essay<\/a> for New York Review of Books, Larry McMurtry once described his first meeting with Keaton: \u201cI found her, one morning, sitting in the flower bed outside the Madison Hotel in Washington DC. She was rummaging in a bag big enough to hold a caribou, which contained a camera heavy enough to stun the caribou with, should that be necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to Reservations, Keaton released several other art books: collections of her own work behind the lens; edited volumes of pictures by arcane or wholly anonymous names; found images from adverts, newspaper archives, auction job lots and the damp basements of production companies. And, often, a mishmash of all of the above. Many of these tomes she put together with her creative partner, writer and curator Marvin Heiferman.<\/p>\n

Dolores Gray and her poodle companions, from Still Life, published in 1983 Photograph: Callaway Editions<\/p>\n

Still Life: Hollywood Tableaux Photographs<\/a> (1983), is a study of Technicolor Hollywood comprising a plethora of studio stills, diorama-like on-set formation posing and publicity shots for magazine profiles. Fred Astaire eating soup; Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman sunbathing; Dolores Gray in a pink Silverline convertible<\/a> with two poodles and a matching haircut. Gregory Peck was so annoyed about a portrait of his that was included that he wrote Keaton a bad-tempered letter.<\/p>\n

Keaton described the staged photos as \u201csad puzzles that filled me with curiosity \u2026 the most believable thing about the photographs is the absence of these people\u2019s inner presence. I was seduced by what wasn\u2019t being told.\u201d Or, as Philip Larkin would put it<\/a>, the record of \u201chold-it smiles as frauds\u201d. Or, as Instagram would put it: yes.<\/p>\n

In Mr Salesman<\/a> (1993) Keaton and Heifermann collated stills from mid-century sales-training videos. Instead of the cheesy, saturated photos of overtly grinning reps that one might expect, there is a noir-like, Lynchian feel to the book. The subjects of the photographs might be the most conformist cogs of capitalism, and the door-to-door grind utterly prosaic, but the black and white images are frequently surreal and unnerving. A silhouette of a man standing half in shadow, power stance, hat held by his side, the patterns of light and shade bring to mind Alexander Rodchenko<\/a> or Garry Winogrand. There is Brylcreem and there are brogues, but there\u2019s also an insidious creepiness, a subtle menacing.<\/p>\n

Pages from Twin Palms Publishers book of Diane Keaton Photograph: Twin Palms Publishers<\/p>\n

In 1999, the pair published Local News<\/a>, a compendium of 92 photographs from the archives of the defunct tabloid Los Angeles Herald Express<\/a>. \u201cThese portraits are a stockpile of neglected treasures,\u201d Keaton wrote in the book\u2019s introduction. \u201cThis book honours them; it honours the pretty, the hopeful, the ordinary, the murdered, the ugly, the tortured, the smug, the guilty, the lost and found \u2026 Each human face is a compelling mystery, that looks back at us like a mirror reflecting the absolute fact that we live, we die, we are forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

While much of Keaton\u2019s own work was monochrome, 2002\u2019s Clown Paintings<\/a>, a collaboration with gallerist Robert Berman \u2013 with written contributions by Woody Allen, Dan Aykroyd, Whoopi Goldberg and more \u2013 was a bomb in a paint factory. A collection of 66 clown portraits by amateur artists, some of which Keaton owned (and had once loaned to the Warhol Museum), these clowns refused to be neglected, refused to be ordinary. Keaton was as \u201cmesmerised by their mute eloquence as she was by their bad taste\u201d.<\/p>\n

Photograph: Rizzoli<\/p>\n

Keaton returned to including her own work in Saved: My Picture World<\/a> (2022), sold as a \u201cvisual autobiography\u201d. Pigeons were the subject of some striking shots taken in London\u2019s Trafalgar Square, 1981. (If someone were to make a list of the best pigeon photographs, this one<\/a> by John Speirs must surely be top, but one of Keaton\u2019s could easily take second place; although perhaps we must also consider the photographs taken by actual pigeons<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Keaton described<\/a> how the birds took her mind off filming a demanding part in Reds<\/a> (for which she later earned an Academy Award nomination). \u201cI\u2019m not sure why I began taking pictures of the pigeons,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIt might have been due to their constant manic swooping down on hundreds of tourists who seemed to enjoy the outrageously close proximity of our so-called feathered friends.\u201d Upon her death the animal rights charity PETA released a statement<\/a> praising Keaton\u2019s lifelong love for animals (she adored her golden retriever, Reggie) but which specifically mentioned her fondness for pigeons.<\/p>\n

Another segment in Saved has Keaton turning her camera on Hollywood Boulevard to capture its lower-key denizens: Z-listers, street performers, studio greeters. \u201cInstead of choosing to capture fabulous movie stars I was in search of the so-called \u2018toss aways\u2019. I thought of them much in the same manner I think of myself \u2026 just one more lost soul searching for some kind of redemption,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Keaton was never recognised as the actor she was when taking the pictures, but not everyone approved of the side hustle: \u201cI remember taking shots of a particularly dapper older gentleman who spotted my flash, ran after me and threw a bag of french fries at my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overlooked \u2026 street portraits from Saved, published in 2022. Photograph: Diane Keaton\/Rizzoli<\/p>\n

Keaton\u2019s unnamed portraits of Tinseltown were another facet of her obsession with the overlooked, the understudied, the forgotten. But really, she was interested in everything. One chapter in Saved is devoted to \u201cClinical Diagnoses of Diseases of the Mouth\u201d, with images from a particularly gruesome flea-market find.<\/p>\n

Keaton\u2019s other image-led books (she also wrote two memoirs) are testament to those wide range of interests and predilections. There is Fashion First<\/a> (2024) with a foreword by Ralph Lauren; a personal exploration of her fashion and clothing choices. Her love of architecture and design is reflected in California Romantica<\/a> (2008), an assortment of photos which celebrate the stucco walls, clay tile roofs and prominent arches of the California Mission and Spanish Colonial Revival<\/a> styles (introduced by DJ Waldie). House<\/a> (2012) details neglected farmhouses and crumbling warehouses, whereas The House That Pinterest Built<\/a> (2017) evaluated how she planned her entire home using the online image board, as well as offering interiors tips for readers.<\/p>\n

Keaton was also a champion of the unsung talents of others. When she acquired a 40-year-old box of 20,000 negatives which turned out to be the work of a commercial photographer in Fort Worth \u2013 Bill Wood \u2013 Keaton curated them into a book (Bill Wood\u2019s Business<\/a>, published in 2008) and an accompanying exhibition to safeguard the quirks and minutiae of American social and cultural life. Afterwards, she donated the lot to the International Center of Photography.<\/p>\n

In Dead of Night<\/a> (2021), Keaton and photographer Nick Reid edited a book of eerie pictures of car crashes taken by a county coroner called Robert H Boltz (Keaton had bought his archive). Chiaroscuro images with an eldritch quality, they are an unsettling combination of violence and silence.<\/p>\n

Unsettling \u2026 Robert H Boltz\u2019s Dead of Night, a book edited by Keaton. Photograph: Robert H. Boltz\/Twin Palms Publishers<\/p>\n

And Keaton supplied a foreword<\/a> for a collection of Ron Galella\u2019s \u2013 the notorious pioneer of US paparazzi culture \u2013 prints. \u201cEvery person featured in this book had a relationship with Ron Galella,\u201d she wrote. \u201cSome denied it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was a zealous and steadfast preservationist of artistic and cultural achievement, whether that be her troubled brother\u2019s writing and photographs (published in Brother & Sister<\/a>, 2020), or when sitting for two decades on the board of the LA Conservancy<\/a>. (Keaton helped to save two Frank Lloyd Wright homes<\/a>, one of which she lived in; and attempted to protect the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel<\/a>, one of her subjects in Reservations, and the location of Robert F Kennedy\u2019s assassination).<\/p>\n

Ennis House by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of many properties Keaton campaigned to save.<\/p>\n

Since her death last week, the entertainment industry has paid homage to Keaton as a brilliant actor and fashion icon \u2013 correct \u2013 but her legacy should also include her influence in the domains of visual art, design and architecture. Especially, as the New Yorker critic and Keaton\u2019s friend Janet Malcolm once described it, the \u201cmordant melancholy\u201d<\/a> of the Rolleiflex images Keaton produced. In 2008, when presented with the Trustee award<\/a> by the International Center of Photography, Keaton explained her raison d\u2019\u00eatre for documenting, collecting, curating: \u201cSo much is forgotten and destroyed in our culture. We all long to be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s one of the most memorable scenes in Annie Hall: Diane Keaton\u2019s eponymous protagonist chatting with Alvy on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-216710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}