Keri Pickett

She got her first camera when she was 8. However, it wasn't until she took photography classes at what was then-Moorhead State and began working in the darkroom that she realized her passion."I was hooked right away," she said. "I mean that was it: alchemy, the science, the magic. "And I think my eye and my sentiment would have been very much the same, but my brain was very much shaped in the art department."

• Name — Keri Pickett • Born — 1959 • Birthplace — Charleston, SC, USA • Education — Moorhead State University • Occupation — Photographer, Filmmaker

Pickett graduated with a B.A. degree in photography from Moorhead State University in Minnesota with minors in Art History and Women's Studies. After graduation in 1983, Pickett moved in with her photographer uncle Roy Blakey in New York for a short time while starting an internship under the direction of American photographer Fred W. McDarrah at the Village Voice. "Using her new position, she set out to document the '80s arts scene. She shot concerts for The Voice, from Kool & The Gang and Run DMC to Minneapolis’ own The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and “Purple Rain”-era Prince, some shots she’d never exhibited before. She also trained her camera on the bar Tin Pan Alley, where punks, sex workers and artists, like employees Kiki Smith and Nan Goldin, all hung out." In 1987, after Pickett was diagnosed with Burkett's lymphoma, a rare cancer characterized by the rapid growth of tumors in the body, she left New York and returned to Minnesota to begin chemotherapy. During the two years of Pickett's treatment, she concentrated on her photographic work: Kids Coping with Life-Threatening Illness. Where once she had thought she was too young to die, Pickett's paradigm shifted as she photographed and became friends with children in the hospital who were dying of cancer. Pickett says, "When I was on chemotherapy I was so upbeat and positive that this started coming out in my pictures. I was a positive example to people. I started taking photos of kids with life-threatening illnesses, and my work switched....I starting putting more of myself into the work."

In 1995, Pickett published Love in the 90s. B.B. and Jo, The Story of a Lifelong Love, A Granddaughter's Portrait, black-and-white photographs of her grandparents that she took when they were in their 90s, interwoven with the love and courtship letters they wrote to each other beginning in 1928. The book won the American Photography Book Award for 1995. Photographs of her grandparents have appeared in Life, German and German Geo and the Village Voice (cover). Pickett's Lambda Literary Award-winning book Faeries, published by Aperture Books with a foreword by James Broughton, records the life and personality of gay men who self-identify as Radical Faeries and gather every summer off-the-grid in a celebration of identity. Begun in 1994, the project was shot over six years at an annual ten-day meeting in the northern Minnesota sanctuary called Kawashaway. Pickett says that she is "someone who honors and celebrates the unique mix of masculine and feminine in everybody". Pickett's third book published in 2004, Saving Body & Soul: The Mission of Mary Jo Copeland uses her photography paired with essays and writings by Margaret Nelson to illuminate the story of Mary Jo Copeland, a housewife and mother of twelve who has overcome remarkable odds in her quest to serve the poor and homeless.

• Kids Coping With Life-Threatening Illnesses • Tibetan Resettlement Project • American Indian Movement • Organic Farm Life • Sharing & Caring Hands: The Mission of Mary Jo Copeland • Tin Pan Alley

"She's a really truly concerned photographer and I think she does it out of her heart rather than the necessity to make money. And that makes a big difference.", says American photographer Fred W. McDarrah of Village Voice Newspaper of Pickett. Mary Ellen Mark, American photojournalist says "Keri Pickett's deeply moving photographs are a passionate statement of her devotion... It is rare these days to see images portrayed with such honesty." Michael Fallon, writer for the Minneapolis City Pages says "Pickett's photographs in general are almost a kind of performance art--a ritual act of conjuring up the greater truth that lies in wait like a serpent beneath the surface. Her artistic success comes perhaps from her connection to the interior lives of her subjects, or the absolute strength of her will. In the end, Pickett puts much more of herself into her photos than a viewer is likely to realize."

• "Day in the Life of the American Woman" • "Aperture at 50", Aperture Books • "Native Universe, Collection of the New Museum of the American Indian", Smithsonian [cover] • "Minnesota 24/7", DK Publishing • "At Grandmother's Table, Women Write about Food, Life, the enduring bond between Grandmothers and Granddaughters", Fairview Press • "Minnesota In Our Time, A Photographic Portrait, 12 Photographers Document Minnesota", Minnesota Historical Society Press • "Hugs and Kisses", Abbeville Press • "Our Grandmother's, Loving Portraits by 74 Granddaughters", edited by Linda Sunshine, Welcome Enterprises Inc • "The Mission, Inside the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints", Warner Books.