Kari Wehrs’ project, Keep Looking Up, allows us to share her experience of losing family, as she examines the poignancy and emotion of those we love at the end of life. As a photographer, she is interested in personal stories, people, and a documentary stance.

Originally from Minnesota, Kari first moved to Maine to attend the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland in the fall of 2007. With photographic interests that span the history of the medium, Kari’s most recent endeavor with her work is portraiture employing the 1850s wet plate collodion process. She views her resulting tintypes as personal, intimate, and enduring photographic objects. Kari is currently a workshops instructor at the Maine Media Workshops + College in Rockport, ME. Her next goal is attending graduate school to receive her MFA.

Keep Looking Up

Keep Looking Up is a story about love, aging, family, reflection, and re-growth. It is a quiet story about beginnings and endings that hold meaning and intimacy.

Sharing their personal philosophies, Marvin and his daughter Dawn talk about this specific time in their lives, and how this time also relates to their lives as a whole.

I want to thank all of my family – and specifically my grandparents, Marvin and Myrtle – and my mother, Dawn. I am thankful to have shared this time with them all.