Bob Keefer

Bob Keefer grew up in the woods of Alabama, Minnesota, and South Carolina before his family moved to the concrete expanses of Los Angeles when he was eight. As a photographer and artist, he may be trying to recapture the mystery of those childhood forests through a historic art form—hand-colored black and white photography, which combines the cool Modernist process of photography and the more personal art of painting. Along the way he studied history of religion at Harvard and spent three decades as a newspaper arts writer before retiring to spend more time photographing the Northwest. His work has been shown at galleries across the Pacific Northwest, and is in the Art About Agriculture Permanent Collection at Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences. His works grace the cover and interior of the book Forest Under Story, a collection of writings from the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program.