Art Metropole

#11918

Young Ideas

Artist

Eddie O'Keefe

Date

2015

Publisher

Bywater Bros. Editions

Format

Artists' Books

Size

5.5 × 7 inches

Length

88 pages

Genre

Photography

Young Ideas brings together a collection of diverse imagery created by the young American filmmaker Eddie O’Keefe. Compiled over the past five years the book features location shots and stills from his videos and films placed alongside photographs taken in an around the Southwest region of the USA. Subject matter is varied—imagery of gun-toting protagonists, hooded beauty contestants, and blood-soaked ravers mingle with shots of empty laundromats, Disneyland topiary, and bleached out street scenes—creating an alternative vision of the West that’s both familiar and distant at the same time.

O’Keefe’s talent lies in his deft ability to manipulate conventional film and photography genres into new arrangements that expand what one would normally associate with a music video, a road movie, or a photo book. Young Ideas continues this trend. Combining fact and fiction into a tart cocktail, it presents a unique view of the American landscape, unseen in any photo publication to date. If one has a taste for the macabre, the weird, and the beautiful, then this book is for you.

Eddie O’Keefe is a photographer, writer and film director from Elmhurst, Illinois. He graduated from Columbia College in 2010 and is currently living in Los Angeles where he’s studying directing at the American Film Institute. O’Keefe is known for his innovative music videos for bands such as The Orwells, Jonathan Rice and Springtime Carnivore, as well as his short films — Sun Sessions (2008) and The Ghosts (2011). He is currently working on his first feature film, Shangri-La Suite, which is scheduled to be released this year. Young Ideas is his second book.