Portrait of Keith Dotson on location at the Hamilton-Lay Store in east Tennessee

Portrait of fine art photographer Keith Dotson on location at an old general store in Tennessee. Photo by Teena Young.

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About Keith

Keith Dotson is a contemporary photographer living in the Nashville, Tennessee metro area who creates art for a global audience.

Specializing in black and white photography, his favorite subjects include landscapes, cityscapes, and abstractions from nature. He is especially drawn to places with intrinsic mystique: historic places, old houses, and the soft light of gloomy days. 

Keith's photographs have been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, Minneapolis, Toronto, Madison (WI), and Knoxville (TN).

Keith is the author of the book Unloved and Forgotten: Fine Art Photographs of Abandoned Places, published in 2019, and The Wheeling Portfolio, published 2022.

Two of Keith's photographs were featured in Ken Burns' important 2022 book Our America: A Photographic History (Shown below. Read more about it here).

Personal background

Keith is a parent, an environmentalist, and a restless spirit. Originally from Texas, he graduated from college in Austin and worked for years as a professional art director in the Austin area. He taught art and design at Austin Community College and at Texas State Technical College in Waco, where he also participated on the curriculum advisory board.

An avid traveler, Keith has carried a camera across the U.S. and overseas to places like India, and even above the Arctic Circle in Greenland.

He currently resides in the exciting Nashville metro area, where he enjoys live music, good southern cooking, and nature’s beauty in all four seasons.

Aesthetic

With photography, Keith Dotson presents straight-forward black and white images, allowing the drama and mood of the subject to shine. He prefers the look and atmosphere of soft light, often shooting on overcast or stormy days that keep other photographers at home.

He believes the landscape has a spirit that's shaped by its aesthetics, weather, geography, topography, history, and human activity. The Japanese recognize this by building torii gates and shrines to honor significant (sacred) locations. Native Americans and other indigenous people have recognized it too, sometimes leaving behind petroglyphs or other markers to tell the stories of their ancestors, and to mark their sacred places. For Keith, photography is an attempt to capture the essence of this same spirit of the land.

Private Collections

In addition to private collections across the globe, from LA to Charleston and Dubai to Canberra, photographs by Keith Dotson can be found on the walls of major hotels, banks and financial services firms, high-tech companies, universities, medical clinics, fine restaurants, and even on the walls at Amazon's new Nashville office tower.

Among his collectors are celebrities from Nashville and Los Angeles, a NYT best-selling author, a cast member from the classic TV series Seinfeld, and a billionaire business tycoon who also formerly owned a stake in the Boston Celtics. In December 2020, a Judge in the Nashville (Davidson County) Chancery Court decorated her private chambers with ten black and white photographs by Keith Dotson.

One of his landscape photos even went on a European tour as a stage backdrop for a Danish pop singer.

Movies and Television

Keith's photographs appeared in two major motion pictures including the 2016 movie Why Him? and the 2018 action film Peppermint, starring Jennifer Garner. His photographs had multi-season recurring roles on the sets of Grey's Anatomy and Melissa and Joey, and have appeared in other TV shows like Modern Family, Gossip Girl, The Mindy Project, and Tyler Perry's Sistas.

Three photographs by Keith Dotson, as seen on the set of Grey's Anatomy.

Three photographs by Keith Dotson, as seen on the set of Grey's Anatomy. 

Media Kit

Members of the media may be interested in the additional information provided in Keith's Media Kit, or in downloading Keith's current Artist Profile Sheet below.

Keith Dotson Artist Profile Sheet

Click here to download the two-page PDF of Keith's latest Artist Profile Sheet.