Ralph Eugene Meatyard (American, 1925–1972) is one of the photographers I've engaged with over the years (you can't do it with everyone, so you have to pick a few), and I picked him the same way I picked teachers: because I wanted someone who challenged me. I didn't like or "get" his work on first encounter, so he filled that bill.
With some photographers there doesn't seem to be a wholly adequate representative book, and that's true of Meatyard. Or maybe it's that his pictures are somehow only half successful in what they're trying to express; at least, you have to surrender to his interior mindset to feel what he's trying to get at, and I can only do that half the time. I do feel it fully, from time to time.
A symbolist, I'd call him. You might like him if you like gothic horror, spiritualism, seances, creepy and slightly campy mystery. He's oblique, dark, indistinct. In this book the photos are accompanied by little essays—I might characterize them as "related meditations"—on each picture. They don't exactly illuminate the pictures, but they offer interesting company as we then consider each photograph for longer than we might have otherwise. Immersion, through his little windows, is good in Meatyard's case.
The author is Alexander Nemerov, an accomplished academic (Stanford, Yale) and Diane Arbus's nephew.
I think of Meatyard as the still-photography counterpart of Andrei Tarkovsky [this picture of AT, by Jane Bown, is about to be deleted]. He's one of the few photographers who make me wonder if they might have been better off as painters...if he could paint. You just do have to suspend your attachment to the literal with him, and surrender to the mystery, the poetry, and the gloom. His means are limited so it's not always the easiest thing to do.
Behind it all I always get the sense that he was having fun doing what he did.
Photographically considered, his uniqueness is a good argument for becoming familiar with him. There are only a few photographers who are inimitable.
Mike
Book of Interest this week:
Ralph Eugene Meatyard: American Mystic (Fraenkel Gallery, 2017). An excellent introduction to Meatyard's quirky, spooky worlds. "Photography is a dream of awaking to a world still dewed in sleep." And Fraenkel Gallery's productions are always a cut above. The link is a doorway to Amazon.
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Kenneth Tanaka: "I am delighted to see you call out Ralph Meatyard’s work, Mike. 'Behind it all I always get the sense that he was having fun doing what he did.' Your sense is accurate. Ten years ago the Art Institute of Chicago held a monographic retrospective show of Ralph Meatyard’s work (titled 'Dolls and Masks') to commemorate his family’s donation of a nice sampling of his works to the museum collection. During that show I had the privilege of spending an evening with members of his family. I knew nothing of his work until that evening. But it became clear from his family’s anecdotes that 'having fun' was at the core of his most notable, and spookiest, works. A rural optician just entertaining himself and his kids."
Aaron: "Meatyard did a lot of his work in connection with the Lexington Camera club, I believe. That would have been one interesting camera club! Here's a book I read some time ago about it."
robert quiet photographer: "I first met Meatyard's work in a store of secondhand books in Germany during a business trip many years ago and I immediately fell in love with his photos. Each photo could be the starting point for a story that each of us can create leaving room for imagination. I had never thought about the Tarkovsky analogy; it seems like an interesting thought. I'll think about it. Thanks for the suggestion. :-) "
hugh crawford: "Somehow I didn't know that the Family Album of Lucybelle Crater is based on Flannery O'Connor's 'The Life You Save May Be Your Own' with the mother and daughter Lucybell Craters until I Googled Lucybelle Crater and the Flannery O'Connor reference came up. It accrues so much more meaning knowing that."
Crabby Umbo: "Meatyard died about the time I entered college for photography, and he was little known but well revered by a small selection of teachers I had. I always thought he was a good example of a person that didn't have to sacrifice his life to photography, but had a 'real' job, and a family, etc., and carried on as a photographer as an informed avocation or even a hobby; and yet made some sort of footprint in the community. Based on his work, I always thought it was funny that he was born in 'Normal,' Illinois!"
To each his own, but like Joel-Peter Witkin, both always struck me as if they were trying a little... too hard.
The photographer who delves into the surreal, dark and dark humor best (IMHO) is Les Krims, who has been photographing the surreal (in real life and staged tableaux) since the sixties in B&W and color. I recently learned that, "In 1971 a kid in Tennessee was kidnapped, and the only condition for the boy's return was that a gallery which was exhibiting your work (Krims) take it down." Wow- talk about audience response (quote from a VICE interview)!
The link below displays a small survey of his work- small in more ways than one...
http://www.baudoin-lebon.com/en/artistes/oeuvres/1076/les-krims
Posted by: Stan B. | Wednesday, 02 June 2021 at 02:04 PM
I would say "no" on the painter bit. Some of the power of Meatyard's images is derived from the fact that they are photographs, and so have that photographic verisimilitude thing going for them. As paintings they'd just be inventions, and probably have all the deficits of off-market surrealism.
Posted by: Tex Andrews | Wednesday, 02 June 2021 at 03:03 PM
Interesting that Alexander Nemerov is the author. When I think of Meatyard, I also think of Arbus.
Posted by: John Camp | Wednesday, 02 June 2021 at 05:46 PM
I have to comment on Stan B.'s entry here. I don't put Meatyard and JP Witkin in same category, BUT, I always mention Joel-Peter Witkin is a person I should have never gone to see lecture, and just kept looking at the work. For me, Witkin turned from a mysterious photographer working through the horrors of his life, to an art teacher with a lot of "MFA Art Speak", and a persona and work "calculated" to be what it was! Wholly disappointing, and I never looked at his stuff again, and sold the book I had.
The moral of the story here, is the less known about an artist, the better!
Posted by: Crabby Umbo | Thursday, 03 June 2021 at 07:35 AM
For someone that may be interested in a different side of Meatyard's body of work.
https://www.speedmuseum.org/exhibitions/ralph-eugene-meatyards-the-unforeseen-wilderness/
In the vein of Carleton Watkins, Meatyard's photos of Red River George contributed to the preservation of that beautiful Kentucky wilderness from an Army Corps dam project.
Posted by: DGlos | Friday, 04 June 2021 at 08:10 AM
I am so glad that DGlos posted that reference to an upcoming Meatyard show of his non-signature work. My earlier comment featured a link to the Meatyard prints in the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, showing a wider sampling of his work. (The process of "featuring" a comment apparently, and unfortunately, strips-away all links.) But, indeed, a wider-angle view of his photography reveals far more varied eye than the gloomy, spooky "masks and dolls" for which her became known. It looks like....a much more typical advanced amateur eye.
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Saturday, 05 June 2021 at 11:26 AM