About Keith Dotson - Shadows and Light

Photographer Keith Dotson shoots an old car in the woods. Photo by Teena Young.

My name is Keith Dotson and I’m a professional fine art photographer. I specialize in black and white photographs of abandoned places, landscapes, cityscapes, and abstractions from nature.

This blog is my informal space for posting all kinds of content including Instagram snapshots, stories, notes from the field, exhibition reviews, and who knows what else? To view my portfolios, please visit my official website at keithdotson.com.

About me

In addition to being a passionate photographer, I’m a parent, an environmentalist, an observer, a foodie, an art lover, a traveler, and a person who believes in squeezing the juice out of every day. Over the years I have been an art director, an illustrator, an art teacher, and a painter. I grew up in Texas but now live in the exciting Nashville metro area.

My Bio

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).

And three of Keith’s photographs appeared for multiple seasons on the wall of Meredith Grey’s bedroom in the TV show Grey’s Anatomy.

Three landscape photographs by Keith Dotson, seen on the wall of Erin Grey's bedroom in Grey's Anatomy. — Three landscape photographs by Keith Dotson, seen on the wall of Meredith Grey’s bedroom in Grey’s Anatomy.

In 2025, Keith also appeared in episode 4 (Memphis) of the British/Australian TV travel show Griff’s Great American South, where he photographed abandoned places in the Mississippi Delta with Griff Rhys Jones.

Keith Dotson with Welsh TV presenter Griff Rhys Jones in the Mississippi Delta

In addition to private collections across the globe, from L.A. 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, on music CD covers and wine labels, and even on the walls at Amazon’s Nashville office tower.

Among his collectors are:

celebrities from Nashville and Los Angeles
a New York Times best-selling author
a leading cast member from the classic TV series Seinfeld
a leading actress from the classic TV series Designing Women
an art history professor and curator for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
the owner of an energy company based in Abu Dhabi, UAE
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.

Visit his main website at keithdotson.com.

Keith Dotson with his work in the lobby billiard room of the Sam Houstn Hotel in Texas

Quicklinks

Books and Downloads

I’ve published several photography books that are available in print or as a digital download.

Cover of photographer Keith Dotson's book "Unloved and Forgotten: Fine Art Photographs of Abandoned Places" — My first book “Unloved and Forgotten: Fine Art Photographs of Abandoned Places,” published in 2019 and available on Amazon.