Photographic Works by Keegan Baatz
Photographic Works by Keegan Baatz
The work combines photography, embroidery, and slight collage tendencies to explore the intersections of infrastructure, memory, and identity - particularly the idea of connection in both physical and conceptual terms. Rooted in images of power lines and rural landscapes across the American West, my practice transforms photographic documentation through processes of layering, stitching, and erasure. These gestures act as forms of disruption and repair, reconfiguring the image as a tactile site where fragility and resilience coexist.
This exhibition envisions the power grid and hinterland as both literal and metaphorical systems of connection. These structures sustain communities while reflecting the invisible social and emotional frameworks that bind people to place. Through them, I consider how memory, perception, and belonging are mediated by the systems, both human and nonhuman, that surround us.
Informed by systems theory and object-oriented ontology, my practice examines how nonhuman networks - like power lines and rural spaces - reveal unseen forces of connection and dependency. Each work becomes both an image and an infrastructure: a conduit for exploring how power moves through us, how we maintain and repair what connects us, and how photography can serve as a space for reflection, disruption, and renewal.