Bio: Born in Buffalo, Keith Gemerek moved to New York in 1981. After years of work in commercial photography in New York City, he traveled extensively with Yvar Mikaschoff to produce portraits of contemporary composers around the world. For over ten years he has been photographing gay activists working on AIDS, spirituality and community building, gender issues and performance art in New York. In 2004 he had a retrospective of his photographic work at CEPA Gallery in the exhibition Deviant Bodies. He is currently working on a project funded by the MID-Atlantic Foundation, collaborating with Madeline Davis of the Buffalo LGBT Archives, collecting oral histories and photographing documentary portraits of the Elders of Buffalo’s Gay Community.

Statement: As a portrait artist I seek out the faces and personas of people who interest me. As a lover of theatre and ritual and history, I open myself to the power of illusion and magic. As a photographer I can combine these interests with artists who create with the masks both given and created. My photographs are often “made” at the same time they are “taken,” as I involve myself in the creation of the image, consciously and physically setting the stage in a studio or out in the all too real world. My photographs could illustrate stories and are often accompanied by text, or scripture, and sometimes are the background for live performance. Blends of documentation, craft and narrative, my photographs are moments of culture in the making at this particular time in urban America.


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