Keith Biggins and the Return to Spirit River

“I neither could have predicted nor even dreamt about the realization of the hybrid lifestyle of roughneck and fashion photographer that I now live. But in the fall of 2013, following several years toiling in New York’s and London’s worlds of luxury fashion, glossy magazines, and pop culture, I was at a creative crossroads and in search of a new adventure.

It was on a camping trip in southern England that I looked out across the landscape and began to reminisce about my former life working in northern Canada: the beauty of the rugged, windswept prairie, the tough as nails blue-collar culture, the personalities, and the spirit and idiosyncratic nature of the small towns that dot this forgotten expanse of northern wilderness. I realized right then that I was called to go back and relive my past life in the oil patch through a photographic lens.

In that serendipitous moment, I promptly returned home to clean out my London studio. Leaving the doors open, I piled most of my earthly belongings into a corner with a “FREE SHIT” sign placed atop as I left that life behind. I took a one-way flight home and hopped aboard a Greyhound bus destined for Spirit River, Alberta, with no plans other than to explore, tell stories, and document contemporary life in the land of pumpjacks and double-doubles.”