RAPLH EUGENE MEATYARD
RALPH EUGENE MEATYARD
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (self portrait)
Born 1925 – D1972
Trained as an optician and practiced this profession for the greater part of life. Bought his first camera for the birth of his son in 1950. Meatyard died in 1967. In the intervening years he took some 18,000 photographs.
Meatyard was an avid reader and literary expert, this included a wide and eclectic array of subjects, mathematics, philosophy, history, science as well as poetry. It is believed that many of his literary themes influenced the scenes and action for his photography, IE ” Lucybelle Crater”. This series of images was directly based around Flannery O’Connor’s story of everybody wearing a mask and being known as Lucybelle Crater.
Around 1958/59 Meatyard took a fancy to a set of rubber type masks that he had seen in a Woolworths store in his home town. He bought a selection of these masks for future use. Over the next 13 years he persuaded and cajoled friends and family to be photographed in a series of locations wearing these masks. These images have now become Meatyards reference work.
James Rhem who wrote a essay on the subject of the masks, and commented, “He (Meatyard) said he felt like everyone was connected, and when you use the mask, you take away the differences.”
Much has been written on the interpretation and meaning of the 13 years of mask photograph’s Kathryn Shields provides a quote direct from Meatyard in her paper: Stories these masks could tell: Literary references in the Photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard. in the Journal for the interdisciplinary Study of Literature.
The spookiness of these photographs, I think comes from their lack of narrative. Or at least their lack of that specific narrative a snapshot has for a member of the familysnapped.The story this series has to tell lies in the subtle differences of a single situation repeated and repeated Lucybelle Crater and Lucybelle Crater. The same each time, yet each time absolutely different”. (qtd. in Meyer 82).
7 years after his death, Meatyards most famous work was issued. The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater. As series of photographs with masked people. Mainly his family along with a few friends. rotating their positions and masks. As Meatyard says, the same but different each time.
One image from the series “Lucybelle Crater”. A rotating array of subjects from his family all wearing masks. This work was not released until some 7 years after his death.
Photo Book (Phaidon) provides an entry for Meatyard, but it illustrates a photo without masks, I wonder why? This does make it plain that Meatyard did did take alternative photographs.
Meratyard gained a very creditable appreciation in a very short photographic career.
He died of cancer in 1972. aged 47.
REFERENCES
Shields M Kathryn (Dec 2004) Stories these masks could tell: Literary references in the photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard.Mosiac: a journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. 37. pp 87-109. Available from: <http:www.bolton.ac.uk/> [accessed 2 October 2015
Grant, A. (2004) The photographer who masks his subjects. New York Times [on-line] 5 December. [Accessed 2 October 2015] Available from, <http://www.nytimes.com/>
Photo Book (2000) London, New York Phaidon
IAN SMITH'S PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNEY 