Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Children wearing masks. Kids waving flags in rotting rooms. Boys wrestling. Fields of tall grass. Falling-down houses. Meatyard's images are haunting, compelling, telling complicated stories of youth and aging, loneliness and progress, of young boys yearning to be old as captured by an older man who knows better. for my money, meatyard's one of america's very greatest photographers.

Ralph Meatyard is surely not one of the great names of photographic history, but he does deserve a place as far as originality is concerned. He is truly an American original, a poet, a visionary artist of the highest caliber. Using family and friends, Meatyard created a gothic world worthy of Poe and Faulkner. A modest man, rasing a family and working as an optometrist, Meatyard managed to create a world straddling dream and reality. He wasn't afraid to experiment and, using a minimum amount of equipment, but a maximum amount of creativity and experimentation, he snapped a record of both beauty and weirdness. It's surprising that he lived on the border of North and South, in that his work seems so southern in feeling. One has only to create a book of photos by Meatyard, coupled with the poetry of the Arkansas poet Frank Stanford, to create a true work of gothic beauty. All one can say is that he's a true original who deserves to be appreciated. James Hoffman