Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925 - 1972) moved to Lexington, Kentucky in
1950 and developed a passion for photography along with a career as an
optician. Over the next two decades, he created the enigmatic images
that would secure his place in the history of the medium by
consciously challenging the concept of the camera as a mere recorder
of the world. Meatyard's photographs are seldom seen in Maine. Stages
for Being celebrates his legacy with over eighty vintage prints chosen
to explore his innovative practice of staging photographs. Meatyard's
work is deeply rooted in Kentucky, even as it reflects his wider
knowledge of subjects as diverse as literature, jazz, philosophy,
history, and art. On weekends, he scouted the countryside for
abandoned homes to use as sets and directed his wife, children, and
friends in scenes that suggest both ritual and theater. Creating mood
with natural lighting, he used masks, dolls, and found objects as
unsettling props and mined architectural detail for abstract
compositional elements. He experimented with the expressive and
metaphoric power of formal elements such as light and darkness, and
explored photography's ability to make visible what the human eye
doesn't register. He used motion to blur form, so that the human body
appears to lose its solidity; at the same time, he blurred the line
between the physical world and that of energy and the spirit.
Considering the context in which he was working during the 1950s and
1960s-during the Cold War and Vietnam War, an era of tremendous social
and political change in this country-gives his meditations on
mortality a deeper relevance. The photographer's carefully constructed
images work on multiple levels and are best read like poetry that uses
symbolic language to provoke reflection and revelation. His use of
dolls and other props was inspired by Surrealism, with its unexpected
and jarring juxtapositions and connection to the subconscious. When
the photographer Minor White introduced him to Zen Buddhism in 1955,
it provided Meatyard with a way of bringing focused awareness of place
and of the moment to his practice. But, in the tradition of Zen
kōans, it also suggested the offering of a puzzle to be unraveled
through deep contemplation, a question with no single or correct
answer. Meatyard's voracious reading sparked endless ideas for his
work and he embedded himself in Kentucky's cultural community through
a circle of close friends that included writer, environmental
activist, and farmer Wendell Berry; photographers Van Deren Coke and
Robert C. May; the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who shared his
interest in Zen; the painter Frederic Thursz; and the
writer/poet/philosopher Guy Davenport. The latter could have been
describing Meatyard's photographs when he wrote in a 1982 essay, "
Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its maker's attention, it
fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why
they are infinitely rewarding. This exhibition was curated by Janie M.
Welker and organized by the University of Kentucky Art Museum. Visit
Website
culture
20134
Views
29/03/2020 Last update