The photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard defy convention: they have been called visionary, surrealistic, and meditative. Whatever the label, these evocative images of friends and family and the natural world around his home illustrate a delicate psychology of human interaction. Meatyard was trained as an optician, a profession that he maintained all his life in Lexington, Kentucky; he bought a camera in 1950 for the sole purpose of photographing his first-born son. But shortly thereafter, he joined the Lexington Camera Club and developed a friendship with his photography teacher Van Deren Coke, as well as a circle of local writers and photographers, including Guy Davenport, Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry, Jonathan Williams, and Minor White. Family and friends freely participated in Meatyard's staged and mysterious images, which often involve masks and abandoned spaces, and obliquely reference social, political, and cultural issues. A key subject in Meatyard's work is the natural environment, which is featured in his Light on Water series, in which long exposures seem to create calligraphic texts, and his No-Focus series, in which he deliberately photographed stems and twigs out of focus. In one of his last series titled Motion-Sound, the pictures were made by moving the camera gently, creating multiple exposures of the woodland scenes that suggest abstract sound patterns. The book accompanies an exhibition organized by ICP Assistant Curator Cynthia Young with acclaimed writer and Meatyard friend, Guy Davenport, who also wrote the text. Also included are the exhibition history, chronology, and bibliography.
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About the Author
"Ralph Eugene Meatyard was born in 1925 and lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was part of a circle that included the likes of Thomas Merton, Guy Davenport, and Jonathan Williams. Major influences on his photographic work were Aaron Siskind and Minor White, with whom he studied. He died in 1972."
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20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ralph Eugene Meatyard is an American original, a true poet,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ralph Eugene Meatyard (Paperback)
Ralph Meatyard is surely not one of the great names of photographic history, but he does deserve a place as far as originality is concerned. He is truly an American original, a poet, a visionary artist of the highest caliber. Using family and friends, Meatyard created a gothic world worthy of Poe and Faulkner. A modest man, rasing a family and working as an optometrist, Meatyard managed to create a world straddling dream and reality. He wasn't afraid to experiment and, using a minimum amount of equipment, but a maximum amount of creativity and experimentation, he snapped a record of both beauty and weirdness. It's surprising that he lived on the border of North and South, in that his work seems so southern in feeling. One has only to create a book of photos by Meatyard, coupled with the poetry of the Arkansas poet Frank Stanford, to create a true work of gothic beauty. All one can say is that he's a true original who deserves to be appreciated. James Hoffman
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
why do these photos terrify me?,
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This review is from: Ralph Eugene Meatyard (Hardcover)
Children wearing masks. Kids waving flags in rotting rooms. Boys wrestling. Fields of tall grass. Falling-down houses. Meatyard's images are haunting, compelling, telling complicated stories of youth and aging, loneliness and progress, of young boys yearning to be old as captured by an older man who knows better. for my money, meatyard's one of america's very greatest photographers.
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