Ralph Eugene Meatyard American, 1925-1972 In 1950 Gene Meatyard purchased a camera from his employer, an optical firm in Lexington, Kentucky, in order to photograph his newborn son. From that time until his premature death from cancer, Meatyard declared himself a "dedicated amateur," creating a body of work that reflected his fascination with the camera as both a tool of scientific vision and a means for metaphoric discovery. His square-format, black-and-white images ranged from dynamic environmental abstractions to surreal theatrical tableaux, often featuring his children and their friends obscured by Halloween masks and arranged in bizarre, sometimes frightening poses. His most well-known series was published as The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater (1974), in which the children and Meatyard's wife, Madelyn, masqueraded as a fictitious family of grotesques. Themes of faith, family, and home pervade Meatyard's visions, reflecting his interest in Zen philosophy, poetry, and art history and theory. Included in his circle of friends were poet and painter Guy Davenport, Christian theologian and monk Thomas Merton, poet and essayist Wendell Barry, poet Denise Levertov, poet and publisher Jonathan Williams, and literary historian Hugh Kenner. Born in Normal, Illinois, and educated at Williams College (1943-44) and Wesleyan University (1950), Meatyard was largely self-taught as a photographer, although he did study for brief periods in the mid-1950s with Van Deren Coke, Minor White, and Henry Holmes Smith. In 1961 he received the New Talent U.S.A. award. Exhibited widely throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, his work was the subject of several posthumous retrospective exhibitions. Major publications include Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1970); The Unforeseen Wilderness (1971), a collaboration with Wendell Barry; and Ralph Eugene Meatyard: An American Visionary (1991), organized by the Akron Art Museum. A.W.