Capitol, Jefferson City, Missouri, May 2002
"PARTY HONESTY IS PARTY EXPEDIENCY"
Courtesy of Haw Contemporary
Temples of Democracy
I began photographing the interiors of American state capitols in 1982. The
symbolic and iconographic language of these structures fascinated me—the way
they encode ideas about law, patriotism, and identity. However simple, clichéd, or
dated they may now seem, these ideas embody the history of our civic values and
aspirations—the basic question of who, collectively, we have assumed ourselves to
be. I am still working on this project, continually finding new relevance in these
architectural texts.
Keith F. Davis
Jan. 15, 2021
Keith F. Davis (b. 1952) has long been interested in both the history of photography and in the challenge of making compelling pictures. His B.S. degree (1974, Southern Illinois University) was in photographic practice; his graduate degree (1979, University of New Mexico) was in art and photographic history. His curatorial career has included an internship at the George Eastman House (1978-79), oversight of the Hallmark Photographic Collection (1979-2005), and the positions of curator and senior curator at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (2006-2020).
Davis remarks: "Photography is fascinating, in part, because it consistently blurs any line we try to draw between the presumably opposing notions of 'fact' and 'interpretation'. The challenge of image making—the remarkable difficulty of this simple process—never gets old."
