Self Portrait
Born in Normal, Illinois, Ralph Eugene Meatyard eventually settled in Lexington, Kentucky, where he began photographing his new-born son at the age of 25. An optometrist by day, he joined the local camera club, where his talents were recognized and encouraged by Van Deren Coke. Taking pictures only on the weekends, Meatyard began to realize a wholly singular aesthetic, incorporating props (notably masks, detritus, and graffiti) into the photos he took of his wife and children. Influenced by eastern mysticism and Zen philosophy, he began to focus on what biographer James Rhem called "the beauty of ideas rather than ideas of the beautiful." This led Meatyard to his many formal experiments, including the so-called "Zen Twig," "No Focus" and "Sound Image" series.
Early examples of a developing aesthetic
His last effort, completed shortly before his death from cancer at age 47, was The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, a family photo album depicting the family and associates of the titular character. Named after the protagonist in a Flannery O'Conner story, "Lucybelle" features 64 images of Meatyard's wife Madelyn in a hag's mask, accompanied in each photo by a friend or relative in a translucent old man's mask. The first image shows Madelyn with Meatyard himself as the old man, standing in their back yard. The sun seems to be rising behind them, and Madelyn has her foot firmly planted on the neck of a very snake-like garden hose. The world seems newly formed, open and rife with possibility, a sort of Oedipal Genesis for the American Gothic set.
Lucybelle Crater and her 40 year old son, Luycbelle Crater
As the album progresses, we are introduced to the various members of Lucybelle's cohort, all of whom seem to be called Lucybelle. Meatyard's use of the masks, and his insistence on giving everyone the same name, is his attempt to universalize the photographs; he wanted merely the "aroma of having a person, a human being in the picture, which stands for a very different thing than having a particular human being in the picture." He articulated his pictures as representations of sentiment- that which is abstract and universal- as opposed to sentimentality, which is local and particular.
The last image in the series circles back to a garden setting. This time though, Meatyard and Madelyn are in reverse: he is in the hag's mask (and his wife's dress), his body thin and ravaged by cancer, while Madelyn plays the friend. There is a quietness about the picture, and one gets the sense that Meatyard felt he had accomplished what set out to do: to reflect us back upon ourselves, to nudge us "beyond the billboard" of particulars and into a world of greater and deeper consideration. A beautiful idea indeed.
Lucybelle Crater and close friend Lucybelle Crater in the grape arbor
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