Great Black and White Photographers, Part 2

    Ralph Eugene Meatyard was a famous American photographer born May 15, 1925 in Normal, Illinois.  Wanting to continue his trade as an optician, he moved to Lexington Kentucky after marrying Madelyn Mckinney, and worked for a company called Tinder-Krausse-Tinder that sold photographic equipment.
    In 1950, he purchased the his first camera to photograph Michael, his son, and shot with a Rolleiflex medium-format camera after the fact. He joined the Photographic Society of America and the Lexington Camera club in 1954. At the Lexington Camera club Meatyard met Van Deren Coke, who influenced some of his work in the early years. Coke displayed some of Meatywards work in an exhibition titled "Creative Photography in 1956 for the university.
    He attended many workshops during the summers in the mid-1950s. Meatyard often left his film undeveloped for large periods of time, and then worked hastily and immensely in his make do of a darkroom at his house. Ralph used his children as props and subjects while hitting home on the idea of "the surreal "masks" of identity and the ephemeral nature of surface matter" (Wikipedia).
    A lot of Meatyard's work was taken at abandoned farmhouses in Kentucky bluegrass regions. He also took an interest towards writing. Ralph Eugene Meatyard died on May 7, 1972 in Lexington Kentucky at the age of 46.

Untitled

(Michael and Christopher outside brick building)

1960

Untitled 

(Michael in front of deteriorating wall)

1960

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Eugene_Meatyard

http://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/ralph-eugene-meatyard