Gallery Spotlight: Documentary Arts with Clyde Keller

Growing up, Clyde Keller knew he had some big shoes to fill. Keller comes from a strong art background. His grandfather Clyde Leon Keller, also known in Portland as "The Art Man" in the early 1900s, was a premier impressionist painter. If you look him up on eBay, you'll see his paintings going for big money.

The younger Keller learned the classic rules of composition as a child and began taking photographs in the '60s. Politics sparked his interest as a teenager and was eventually hired by the Kennedy family to document Robert F. Kennedy on the campaign trail in 1968. When the Triborough Bridge in New York City was renamed the RFK Bridge, the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority used some of Keller's RFK photos to promote the change, thus placing his photos all over the New York subway system. Now, Keller draws his inspiration from a broad spectrum. His photos range from the fine arts to candid, documentary type photos. He coined the phrase, "documentary arts" to define the theory behind his craft of essentially photographing what he observes. At his show at Sisters Coffee (in the downtown Subway) this month, you'll see panoramic landscape photos he has taken including Central Oregon shots like the moon over For Rock.

Clyde Keller
Photographs on display at Sisters Coffee, 939 Bond St., Bend