Diane Keaton holding a Nikon, left, her photo book Reservations, right.
Actress Diane Keaton passed away over the weekend, and although she was best known for appearing in The Godfather and Woody Allen movies, she also had a keen eye for photography.
In fact, Keaton released at least four photography-related books, two of which she photographed herself. Keaton’s favorite camera was a Rolleiflex and during her travels in the 1970s she used one to create Reservations (1980), which saw Keaton explore unloved American hotels.
Keaton used direct flash for the square black and white photos; the book also signaled her interest in home design and architecture. She released The House that Pinterest Built (2017), a style guide for the home, and California Romantica (2019), a book looking at Southern California architecture.
But if you asked her, Keaton would not describe herself as a photographer. “I shoot the pictures, but I’m not doing them in any big way. I just like it. I like images,” she told House Beautiful. “If I see a tree that looks unusual, I’ll just take a picture of it. I take a lot of pictures that go nowhere. But I enjoy it. And maybe someday I’ll do something with them.”
Keaton was just as much of a photography enthusiast and collector; she once told The New York Times that it was her dream to “purchase every photography book ever published,” buy an old warehouse, and transform it “into a massive library of image-driven books and open it to the public,” per Art News.
She released Saved: My Picture World (2022), which explored her lifelong fascination with collages.
“I’m just a person who cuts out paper, throws it up on the wall, or finds old photographs that I see at the swap meet and throw them up on the wall,” Keaton told House Beautiful.
“I mean, I have tons of that — tons, tons, tons. And I have a very long table. And I like to play around with cutting objects and putting them in the same moment — maybe I present them as little collages. But nothing important.”