Dustin Randall Keirns (b. 1988, Loveland, CO) is a photographer based in Denver, Colorado. His work centers on the intersection of humans and the natural world. Since returning to Colorado in 2015, he has made the state’s backcountry a central protagonist in his practice, capturing its raw wilderness and the natural abstractions he encounters on his adventures. Keirns creates imaginative dramas of the landscape, using scale, form, and color to evoke an emotional and psychological resonance of place.

His photographs often begin where roads turn to trails—access points into wild spaces where people confront the complexities of their relationship with the land. These journeys reflect not just physical movement, but also internal exploration: how nature mirrors our fragility, envokes our resilience, and challenges our sense of belonging. Through his lens, Keirns examines this intrinsic relationship between people and place, and what it means to exist—however briefly—within something much larger than ourselves.

Alongside his ongoing landscape work, Dustin is developing a new body of work exploring queer identity and the natural world. This project blends intimate portraitures of his community, self-portraiture, and the landscape. the work affirms queer presence in nature—not as outsiders, but as part of its rhythm and mystery. It challenges the idea that queerness is separate from the land, instead presenting it as something elemental, enduring, and deeply connected.

Dustin earned a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York and studied abroad at L’École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ÉCAL) in Switzerland. His thesis work earned him an Alumni Scholarship from SVA, and he was awarded a darkroom fellowship from the New York Camera Club (now Baxter Street). In Spring 2025, he participated in Seeing Pink: The Queer Perspective in Photography, a workshop led by Renaldi through the International Center of Photography. His first solo exhibition, Reminiscence, opened in January 2025 at the Molly Brown House Museum in Denver, and he currently has an exhibition on view at the Teller House in collaboration with Central City Opera. Earlier this year, he was selected for a solo issue (No. 24) with Pearl Press and his debut monograph, Poems for Colorado, is set to release in late summer 2025.