Experimentation past the lens: a retrospective of Ralph Eugene Meatyard debuts on the High

“I adhere to the techniques of the earliest and most sincere workers of the camera — straight, unmanipulated pictures. That which I present is that which I see,” Ralph Eugene Meatyard, quoted in Beaumont Newhall, New Talent in Photography USA for Art in America 49, no. 1 (1961).

The legendary Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925-1972) was an beginner photographer, mental, skilled optician and dedicated husband and father whose grownup life was spent in Lexington, Kentucky. Deeply diving into inventive processes and experimentation, Meatyard explored love of household and mates and problems with mortality. Even throughout his lifetime, Meatyard had begun to realize nationwide standing amongst high quality artwork photographers for his experimental and expressive work that he described as “romantic-surrealistic.”

The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard is a celebration of the centennial of the artist’s delivery on the High Museum of Art. Debuting the High’s acquisition of a serious assortment of gelatin silver prints acquired from the Meatyard property, the exhibition options pictures from the 1970 Gnomon Press monograph eponymously titled Ralph Eugene Meatyard. The High now owns all 36 pictures revealed within the monograph, together with 34 plates, cowl and a self-portrait frontispiece.

As an grownup, Meatyard lived within the South however grew up in Normal, Illinois — an apt birthplace for this man who led a really regular life. (“Meatyard” is an arcane 17^th century English surname, however its surrealistic sound is an apt byline for the photographer. Meatyard himself collected unusual names that he famous in a loose-leaf binder.) He didn’t contemplate himself a Southerner, though he has typically been related to Southern pictures.

Although Meatyard counted himself as an beginner and hobbyist, he exhibited his work nationally with high quality artwork photographers comparable to Minor White (who launched him to Zen Buddhism), Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind and Emmet Gowin. His nationwide fame had grown sufficient that his 1972 passing garnered a New York Times obituary that described Meatyard as dwelling (considerably disparagingly) in a backwater. Yet, it was dwelling outdoors main facilities of artwork and pictures that allowed him the liberty to pursue his idiosyncratic inventive methods.

Trained as an optician, Meatyard moved together with his household to Lexington, house of the University of Kentucky, within the early Nineteen Fifties to take a place with Tinder-Krauss-Tinder optical store. The enterprise additionally offered cameras, which is how Meatyard first turned fascinated about pictures and its mechanics. He joined after which turned a frontrunner of the Lexington Camera Club, whose members have been severe “hobbyists” like himself.

Meatyard was additionally a part of the outstanding neighborhood of thinkers, writers and artists dwelling in and round Lexington and the University of Kentucky, one among many fertile pockets of mental and inventive facilities within the South. Among his mates, colleagues and mentors have been thinker and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, photographer and curator Van Deren Coke and novelist and poet Wendell Berry.

Meatyard primarily created his idiosyncratic photos by digicam manipulation, moderately than by way of darkroom strategies. (He took practically 2,000 pictures a 12 months however solely developed movie a couple of times a 12 months.) Among his methods have been lengthy exposures and using shallow depth-of-field settings. Other instances he moved his digicam to create a whirling summary sense of movement or made double exposures. 

After he was identified with terminal most cancers in 1970, Meatyard proposed that Gnomon Press (a small literary press nonetheless working in Lexington) publish a monograph of his work. He had lengthy grappled with problems with mortality, having suffered a coronary heart assault in 1961. Meatyard himself chosen these legacy photos, which he thought-about amongst his greatest, and edited their placement within the monograph.  

Two-thirds of the photographs are pictures of Meatyard’s spouse, two sons and daughter. Referring to them as his “romance series,” they’re amongst his most iconic and well-known pictures. Using a 2¼” Rolleiflex digicam, he staged his experimental pictures in deserted houses and pure settings round Lexington. He saved props within the trunk of his automobile, together with dolls, dime-store masks and gnarly palms, from which he would create tableaux that commented on getting old and the fragility of life. The pictures are humorous, peculiar and poignant.

The pictures of his mates are extra easy however equally poetic and surrealistic. An instance is his portrait of shut pal and fellow Lexington Camera Club member Cranston Ritchie (1923-1961). Like Meatyard, Ritchie obtained an premature terminal most cancers analysis, leading to a number of amputations of his arm. Facing ahead, Cranston stands with an armless model and mirror, a humorous however tragic tackle destiny and mortality.

A very stunning picture is the ultimate {photograph} of the monograph/exhibition: Meatyard’s spouse and daughter are silhouetted towards an arched window with bent blinds and shadowed partitions. He poignantly referred to the picture as “Madonna.”    

The exhibition will not be a lot curated as organized by the High’s curator of pictures, Greg Harris, who aptly expanded the exhibition’s title to The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Harris has written insightful texts and has put in Meatyard’s usually small gelatin silver prints within the monograph’s sequence. 

The Meatyard property has additionally lent archival help supplies. One case consists of paperwork that provide perception into the monograph’s improvement and distribution, together with a handwritten define titled “MASKS, STORIES, PEOPLE & OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS.” The second case comprises poetry and philosophy books from Meatyard’s private library. 

Overall, by way of this monograph and now this exhibition, Meatyard reveals his notion of his artwork and thought processes within the face of his mortality. There is a way of pathos, in addition to a way of a life well-led. Meatyard is within the gallery with us.

A closing word: During Meatyard’s lifetime, a tightly-knit group of great high quality artwork photographers working throughout the United States strove to raise pictures as a inventive artwork type. Few American museums collected pictures — The High launched its assortment within the early Nineteen Seventies. Meatyard was capable of interact with this community, not solely due to his expertise and authentic imaginative and prescient but additionally as a result of the inventive pictures neighborhood was small, clever and open-minded.  

This Meatyard acquisition, together with 17 extra gelatin silver prints donated by the Meatyard property, has established the High as a serious repository of the photographer’s work. This strategic acquisition displays and re-affirms the High’s now 50+ 12 months dedication to pictures.

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A curator and humanities administrator, Louise E. Shaw has lengthy been fascinated about pictures. She wrote her MFA thesis for Syracuse University on the High Museum of Art’s pictures assortment.