Misty Keasler

Love Hotels, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 2017, Photographs Do Not Bend (PNDB) Gallery, Dallas, 2007, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York, 2007.

HAUNT, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, 2017, David Shelton Gallery, Houston, 2018.

Keasler was first inspired to photograph haunted houses during a visit to Thrillvania in Terrell, Texas. Inspired to take photographs of the rooms as they appeared to visitors, she was eventually allowed access during the Summer of 2015 to shoot photographs of the rooms and portraits of the costumed actors for a feature in D Magazine. After photographing Thrillvania, Keasler was able to extend her project to other immersive haunted houses and attractions throughout the country, ultimately including them in her book and exhibition, Haunt. Using a Hasselblad camera and analogue film, she took photographs in ambient light that required long exposure times, and collaborated with Laura Steele to retouch the photographs in post-production to better convey the visitor experience. She took portraits with a "full studio setup," often flying cross-country to work with actors and costume and makeup crews on days when the attractions were closed.

Framing Desire, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2015.

Basically Forever, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2014.

Big Pictures, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, 2013.

Bard College MFA Thesis Show, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2010.

The Art of Caring: A Look at Life Through Photography, New Orleans Museum of Art, 2009.

The Guatemala City Dump Project, Houston Center for Photography, 2005.

Misty Keasler's work photographing garbage dumps started in 2003, when she received a grant from Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies alongside Charles d'Ambrosio to photograph in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Their project, Guatemala City Dump: Life at the Rim, documenting a makeshift village in Guatemala City inhabited by displaced Mayan people, was awarded the 2003 Lange-Taylor Prize. After completion of that project, Keasler was commissioned by Harper's Magazine to photograph a garbage dump in Manila, Philippines. In January 2009, she traveled to Lagos, Nigeria to document the process of e-waste import and disposal, photographing the conditions and workers present in two garbage dumps. She made the images in her project Half Life over 12 years in these three locations, spending "weeks at a time" on location to ensure that her images "dignify [her] subjects".

In 2003, Keasler worked for several months as a teacher in Japan, where she was inspired to photograph love hotels for their offbeat aesthetic after reading about them in Lonely Planet. With the help of two translators, she gained access to photograph rooms in several hotels, and even the diaries left in rooms by visitors. She describes these images as both a study of private and public space, a topic common to much of her other work, as well as a study of the nature of sex and romance in modern Japan.

Keasler graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2001, and received an MFA in Photography from Bard College in 2010. In 2003, she was awarded both the Lange-Taylor Prize and the Dallas Museum of Art DeGolyer Award.

Misty Keasler (born 1978) is an American photographer based in Dallas, Texas.