"Day Jobs" presents: Tom Kiefer - A Full Length Audio Interview

Read PDF transcript here: bit.ly/DJTKInterview
In association with the Blanton Museum of Art's blockbuster exhibition Day Jobs ( Feb 19, 2023 - July 23, 2023), The Blanton brings you a new series of full length audio interviews with artists whose works are featured in the show. Every interview delves into the day job that spurred their creative growth.
Tom Kiefer is a photographer who grew up in Seattle, Washington and is currently based in Ajo, Arizona. Two years after moving to Ajo in 2001, Kiefer began supplementing his income from creative work with a part-time job as a janitor at the nearby U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility. In 2007, Kiefer was given permission to collect food confiscated from migrants and asylum seekers for donation to the local food pantry. Alongside the confiscated food in the trash, Kiefer found personal items - wallets, crosses, family photos, bibles, toothbrushes - that had been disposed of by border agents.
In the hope of commemorating the people and stories held within them, Kiefer began quietly collecting and documenting these lost objects in a series of photographs that would grow into the project "El Sueño Americano/The American Dream". In 2014, Kiefer resigned from his job to focus on photographing "El Sueño Americano" full time. His work has since been exhibited at the Skirball Cultural Center, the Saint Louis University Museum of Art, and Etherton Gallery, among others. You can find Tom Kiefer at tomkiefer.com and @tomkiefer.photographer on Instagram.
Featured Images: Tom Kiefer, "Trail Markers" (detail), from the series "El Sueño Americano/The American Dream," 2015, Archival pigment print, Framed: 15 ½ x 19 ½ x 1 ½ in, Courtesy of the artist and REDUX Pictures (Photo credit © Tom Kiefer)
Artist portrait courtesy of John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Photo courtesy of the artist.

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