“The camera is an unsophisticated mechanical instrument which, like a mirror, reflects passively without a conscience. The artist must supply the conscience.”
~ Ralph Eugene Meatyard
(1925-1972)
Ralph Eugene Meatyard was a photographer ahead of his time, known for his dream-like black & white photographs of family members in masks, portraits of friends, and radical experiments in abstraction. Shooting almost exclusively in Lexington, Kentucky and the surrounding countryside, his shadowy photographs have often drawn comparisons to Southern Gothic literature. Meatyard's images are filled with symbolic language and signifiers. Meatyard was an integral part of Kentucky’s post-war art and literary intelligentsia. His circle of friends included photographers, painters, poets, scholars, writers and philosophers. Meatyard’s subjective use of the camera has since influenced new generations of photographers. Today, he is recognized as a pioneer of surreal, experimental and non-objective photography.