I like his work a lot myself. I remember reading that he had no running water in his darkroom, and that he had to bring buckets to fill the trays ...
I like his work a lot myself. I remember reading that he had no running water in his darkroom, and that he had to bring buckets to fill the trays ...
Frank,
Most of the work that I saw seemed to be sandwiched negatives.
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
Perhaps more readily available than the Red River Gorge book already mentioned is a retrospective organized by the University of Akron and edited by Barbara Tannenbaum (ISBN:0847813746), called Ralph Eugene Meatyard: An American Visionary. It's a very nice overview of his work, including a bunch of the landscapes as well as the Lucybelle Crater photographs and others. Look on abebooks.com or alibris.com for that one or the Aperture monograph from 1974.
Several points of interest:
1. Unless my memory is failing me entirely, the Rollieflex has a interlock to prevent double exposures, but you can move a dial to release the interlock and cock the shutter without advancing the film - and thus make multiple exposures of a single negative. The same is true for the Minolta Autocord rollie clone, and probably for the Mamiya TLR as well. I have absolutely no idea if Meatyard used a Rolleiflex, a Mamiya, or an Autocord.
2. Despite what the art history pundits say about Meatyard's alienation from society, he was apparently quite a family man, devoted to his wife and kids, and he was also very close friends with the theologian Thomas Merton, who was also a fairly decent photographer.
He was also a protege of Henry Holmes Smith, who was right up the road at Indiana University. Thomas Merton (Brother Louis to his fellow Trappists), was a monk who wrote books on (mostly) Catholic spirituality and mysticism. I wouldn't characterize him as a theologian. His books were brilliant. His photography was awful, at least to these eyes. Apparently Meatyard spent a lot of time at Gethsemane. His work always stimulated a mystical nerve in me, and for the life of me I can't figure out why. I guess he was just wired into some sort of eternal energy.
Meatyard was close friends with Thomas Merton? As a graduate of a philosophy/religious studies program who later turned to photography, I can't tell you how much that blows my mind! Wow. Thanks for the revelation.
As I recall, dimly, he used a TLR of the Rollei type. It's been a long time. I met him shortly before he passed away.
Many thanks for the responses and especially the book suggestions. I'll add the lot to the list I send Santa every year. "American Visionary" will get stars and strong hints, for the essays as much as the photography.
Siskind has become my comfort food: he's a box of rich dark truffles hidden in the bedside cabinet for raiding at lowest ebb. But most of his abstract subjects were two dimensional or pseudo two dimensional before he photographed them, and for me, his photography is about selection and framing. The extra thing that resonated most strongly with me in Meatyard's landscapes was the construction of two dimensions from three. This adds a further handy tool, but the sense of depth makes it so much easier for the viewer to take things too literally. The only similar note I have found thus far was sounding in some of Ray Metzker's landscapes.
Meatyard sounds like an interesting man, and a welcome antidote to the usual cliches about artists' lifestyles. I love the idea of his two week printing blitz, with his wife as ultimate artistic arbiter and continuous loud Jazz suffusing the whole house. The purist in me knows I shouldn't be seduced by biographical details, but purity gets dull fast.
I'd be interested in pronunciation too. Similar English surnames tend to shorten the yard to a swallowed "yud" ("Tiltyard" becomes a hasty "tillyud"), but they do things differently in the USA, even in towns called Normal.
Struan
Frank, what do you mean by "Would have been hard to double-expose a Rollei TLR" ?
I don't understand.
In addition to Barbara Tannenbaum's book (which is an excellent overview) more "landscape" images are to be found in "In Perspective: Ralph Eugene Meatyard" by Christopher Meatyard. The book is mostly found in Italian since it was the catalog for a big Italian show, but a limited number of copies were published in English and sometimes a German bookseller has one (expensive).
The upcoming show (Dec 04) at the ICP in NYC has a book with it that should be heavy on landscape images.
Meatyard started out with a Bolex twin lens C-22. He moved to a Leica but didn't like it. He acquired a Rollieflex and pretty much stuck with it for the rest of his life. He did own a Mamiyaflex with several lenses (almost certainly purchased from Cranston Ritchie's widow) for a time, but did not like it. He preferred to stick with one focal length; so he sold the camera.
He was indeed a friend of Thomas Merton, having met him in Jan 1967. They corresponed and he visited Merton's hermitage on several occasions, but I would hardly say he was over there "all the time." Merton, of course, died in December 1968.
Further, while Madelyn Meatyard (and the famly do do that "yud" thing with the name -- though nobody else in Lexington does) did offer her opinion about REM's prints when the printing was going on, she was hardly the "final arbiter." Indeed, if she didn't like something, Gene really didn't like hearing about it she told me.
James Rhem
(author Ralph Eugene Meatyard: The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater and Other Figurative Photographs, D.A.P: New York, 2002)
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