Larry Keenan, Photographer - Beat Generation & Counterculture Photos
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Biography

photo of Larry Keenan by Chelsea KeenanLarry Keenan, an internationally noted San Francisco Bay Area photographer, graduated with highest honors, from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1967, and majored in Design and Education. He holds two degrees, a Bachelors of Fine Arts and a Bachelors of Applied Art. He also holds a lifetime state teaching credential. During this period, Keenan photographed the final days of the Beat Generation. A selection of his "Beat Era" work is in the permanent collection of the Archives of American Artists in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

From 1967-70, Keenan taught Photography and Art at Concord High School in Concord, CA. In 1971, he won the James D. Phelan Award -- the most prestigious award bestowed upon California-born artists. Keenan has operated his own business as a professional photographer since 1970. He works in his studio and on location and has traveled the world on numerous commercial and personal assignments. His prized photographs are in museums and private collections throughout the world.

Because of his interest and talent in conceptualizing, multi-imaging and digitizing, Keenan has produced exceptional images with the computer since 1985. He was featured on the PBS television program Computer Chronicles digitizing and creating the award winning package cover of Deluxe PhotoLab for Electronic Arts using the Amiga 2000 computer system. In 1992, Willow Mixed Media produced a half hour artist's profile on Keenan and his work for cable television. He is celebrated as a "digital pioneer" in the Random House book Digital Photography and produced his own line of Fractal greeting cards. City Lights Books published his Postcards from the Underground in 1999. Keenan is an alumnus of the Center of Creative Imaging in Camden, Maine and is presently working primarily with a G4 Macintosh system.

Keenan's impressive client list includes: American Restaurant Group, AT&T, Babette, Bank of America, Blue Cross, Bristol Farms, BuyProduce.com, City Lights Books, Clorox, Dean & Deluca, Del Monte, Electronic Arts, Foster Farms, Genentech, Intel, PacBell, Microsoft, Pacific Gas & Electric, Pharsight, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Shell Alliance, Sony, Williams-Sonoma and Visa. Advertising, annual reports, stock photography and computer imaging (using his trademark special effects) are the main areas of his expertise. Keenan is a featured speaker for various photographic associations, expos, college and university classes including teaching part-time for one year at The Academy of Art College in San Francisco. His award-winning photographs have appeared in numerous ad campaigns, corporate and professional publications, CD and record albums, books (including many publications worldwide about the Beats), magazine covers and top selling software packages. He has received awards from Graphis, Art Direction and Communication Arts magazines as well as excellence awards from the N.Y. Art Directors Club.

Keenan is among the world class photographers represented internationally by Getty Images for his stock images.

In November 1995 Keenan's photography was exhibited in Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. From February to June 1996 his work was featured at The National Portrait Gallery for the Smithsonian Institution's exhibit REBELS: Artists and Poets of the 1950s. 1996 he had a solo exhibit in NY at Great Modern Pictures.

The photograph of Larry Keenan is by Chelsea Keenan.

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