American Photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard, born 15 May 1925 is considered by his peers to have created the most original and disturbing photograpic imagery ever! In fact his work consists of dolls, masks, family and friends in abandoned places. His work is very experimental using multiple exposure and deliberate camera movement.
He wanted to reveal a higher truth than fact; use the reality to create a dream like scene. He had two main interests of the scientific nature if camera vision and the spiritual essence behind the visible world. The three main parts of his life were made up of art, career and his family; who were his main photographic subjects as well as his friends. His work isn’t directly about him but it does reveal him.
He creates stories that never actually took place. Instead they are deliberately paradoxical questions or riddles allowing us to let go of all logical thoughts we have when looking at the images at reading into them. These images are a cross between parables and paradoxes. There are the themes of young to old to death, relationships between parent and child in dramatic settings. The females are usually the protagonists and he considers childhood to be a care free time that’s full of curiosity, a time of unbound optimism and imagination. When children play they imagine the reality to be something magical.
His photography shows the gradual change from childhood to adulthood using masks to show a head that’s too big for the small body. These masks had exaggerated features, idiotic grins and wrinkled skin. Sometimes the children are wearing big hands that too have out grown their body. This is to show the awkwardness of a teenage boy whose limbs have grown too quickly for the body to adjust.
There’s something about his work that touches me. Although disturbing as his work is ,I really like his approach to this topic of childhood and how he cleverly creates his unreal stories that I can really believe when I look at his work.
http://themorbidimagination.com/tag/ralph-eugene-meatyard/
http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/meatyard_ralph_eugene.php
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