Benita Keller
Benita Anderson Keller, 67, of Shepherdstown, West Virginia died on October 28, 2021 due to COVID-19 infection. This vital and vibrant photojournalist, gardener, and activist was hospitalized as a recent pandemic wave overwhelmed regional intensive care units. After 16 days of critical care from the generous staff of Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Ranson, West Virginia, Keller’s loved ones gathered bedside as her lungs failed.
Though vaccinated against COVID-19, Keller was immunocompromised due to chronic lymphocytic leukemia. West Virginia has a 41% vaccination rate, the United States’ lowest. This leaves even vaccinated at-risk people like her more vulnerable to infection and death. The slogan “vaccines save lives” refers to lives like Keller’s.
Though photography was central to Keller’s identity, she was a multi-talented artist, landscape designer and gardener, educator, activist, naturalist, parent, and dedicated caretaker. Keller traveled extensively, documenting everyday people, and showing shared humanity across cultures. A self-described “West Virginia farm girl,” and daughter of a stonemason and kindergarten aide, her rural, working class background honed her eye for turning modest or routine life events into extraordinary images.
Keller was part of Shepherdstown High School’s last graduating class, and loved riding her paint horse through the apple orchards surrounding her family’s Kearneysville farm. As an adult, Keller never lived far from the Potomac River, where she found joy and respite in bluebell walks, mushroom hunts, meditating under sycamores, and doing Tai Chi on the historic canal locks.
After falling in love with photography at what is now Shepherd University, she put herself through the University of Maryland’s Masters of Fine Arts program by loading trucks for UPS in the wee hours before classes. For 20 years, Keller inspired art students at Shepherd University, then for another decade at several higher education institutions in D.C. and Maryland.
Throughout those years she photographed in Nigeria, Vietnam, Russia, Haiti, and extensively in Cuba. At home she followed stories like movements for justice, migrant workers, and life in women’s shelters. Keller was acknowledged by the Ernst Haas Award as one of the top 100 photographers in the U.S., and her work is archived at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Shepherdstown’s Bridge Gallery, owned and directed by close friend Kathryn Burns, represented her work.
In addition to her passion for photojournalism and dedication to black and white film photography, Keller also had a seemingly ageless whimsical persona. She curated flamboyant vintage fashion, eclectic flamingo-based holiday yard displays, and studio spaces filled to the brim with imaginative treasures. Pink became her signature color, especially after she used it to paint an entire Shepherd University mobile classroom for her 2004 Trailer and Trash installation — a mischievous visual satire about rural stereotypes.
Keller’s sense of fun was also evident in her 18 year partnership with Steve Parker. The two began their courtship with dancing lessons and were known to cut a rug around Shepherdstown – sometimes in outrageous costumes which invariably featured a vintage hat or headband decked out in flowers and trinkets. They shared a love of local live music, and over the years traveled together to the Caribbean and North Carolina with friends, and hiked the Inca Trail in Peru.
Parker often surprised Keller with special meals or excursions. He planned every stop on a 2015 cross country road trip, so Keller could focus on photographing her Blue Dress to Montana and Back project. Over the years, she tried to outdo him with not one, but two, surprise birthday parties featuring dancing girls jumping out of paper mache cakes she crafted herself.
Keller’s photography career began in earnest in 1984, the same year she gave birth to one of her favorite subjects, her daughter Sarah. Keller’s daughter grew up on the darkroom floor, their mother’s sidekick at art openings, and karate classes until Sarah moved to the western U.S. at 18. From afar, Sarah and Keller’s beloved son-in-law anticipated elaborate Easter baskets and Christmas stockings, thoughtfully assembled to make sure the pair never grew too serious or gave up toys.
Throughout Keller’s 60s, she and Sarah planned much-anticipated annual adventures: backpacking in Yellowstone National Park, fly fishing alpine lakes in the Rocky Mountains, and bicycle camping the length of the C&O Canal. A proud and supportive parent, Keller passed her creativity, spirited nature and love of gardening on to Sarah who is an outdoors and science writer, queer organizer, and conservation advocate.
In recent years, Keller channeled her love for West Virginia’s landscape and her deep sense of justice into resisting industrial pollution and climate change. Most Fridays she could be seen in a red beret standing with fellow organizers, protesting the nearby Rockwool factory just spitting distance from her family’s Kearneysville farm. After being arrested in Washington D.C. during a nonviolent action against climate change, she led her cell mates in fun icebreaker questions to stay entertained.
Keller didn’t simply do art, she lived it. And she led by example for others striving to create beautiful, meaningful lives. Her passion, optimism, unapologetic confidence, loving soul, and generosity of time and spirit will be sorely missed. They will also live on in this world through the many ways she taught others to find the special in everything and everyone.
Keller is survived by her daughter, Kestrel (Sarah) Keller, 37; her son-in-law Jim Curry, 40, both of Bozeman, Montana; her life partner of 18 years, Steve Parker, 68, of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and ex-husband Ron Keller, 73 of Big Pool, Maryland. Her surviving family in Kearneysville, West Virginia includes her mother, Juanita Anderson Cushman, 89; brothers Rendell Anderson, 56, and Monte Anderson, 69, and respective sisters-in-law Gigi Anderson, 55, and Janice Anderson, 65; in addition to many nieces, nephews, cousins, and chosen family members. She was preceded in death by her father, Robert Anderson.
Keller’s public memorial will be held on Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021 at the home Keller and Parker shared at 83 Minden Street in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The outdoor gathering begins at 1:30 pm, with a service at 2:00 pm, followed by a short walking procession to Elmwood Cemetery, led by a jazz band. Refreshments, celebration, and open mic music and stories will follow on the lawn. Loved ones request charitable donations supporting human rights, the environment, or the arts, be made for Keller in lieu of flowers. Non-traditional and bold attire is encouraged as we remember an unconventional soul who spread delight wherever she went.
Online condolences may be offered at www.BrownFuneralHomesWV.com.