Ralph Eugene Meatyard By: Naomi Naranjo

Autobiography Ralph Eugene Meatyard, was born May 15, 1925. He passed away May 7, 1972. His childhood was spent in Normal, Illinois. Unlike the town name, this American Photographer is known for taking family photographs and grotesque masks. Ralph Meatyard, served in the U.S. Navy during World War two and then, on the navy’s V-12 program. He attended college at Williams, but did not earn a degree. He purchased his first camera when his first child was born, in 1950. Four years later he joined the Lexington Camera Club, where he met photographer Van Deren Coke, who encouraged him to explore photography for its expressive possibilities. Meatyard left his weekends open just to shoot and practice photography.

Coke included Meatyard photographs in “Creative Photography Coke included Meatyard photographs in “Creative Photography. Two years later Meatyard began his No-Focus photographs, have no focus but instead are abstract compositions of light and dark forms. In 1959 Meatyard had his first solo exhibition and was featured in Aperture magazine.

Career Meatyard traveled around Kentucky on the weekends with his family and took staged photographs. In the 1960s, he typically chose the setting first and then arranged people. Many of his photographs were of his own children wearing freakish masks and posing in front of abandoned houses and buildings. Meatyard used masks to eliminate or obscure differences among the pictured individuals. He was also interested in movement and willingly included the blurriness of a moving head or arm, lending a dreaminess or ghostliness to his photographs

Meatyard was diagnosed with cancer in 1970, and he spent the last two years of his life working on the Lucybelle Crater series, photographs taken outdoors of his wife wearing a mask of an old hag and accompanied by one of their friends or relatives wearing an old man mask.