Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–1972) lived in Lexington, Kentucky, working a close-knit community of artists, writers, and mystics, including Thomas Merton, Van Deren Coke, and Cranston Ritchie. Since the 1974 publication of the first monograph about Meatyard’s work and the first edition of The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater (Jargon Society), subsequent publications have included A Fourfold Vision (Nazraeli Press, 2004) and Ralph Eugene Meatyard (Steidl/ICP, 2005). In recent years, major solo exhibitions of Meatyard’s photographs have been presented at The International Center of Photography, New York (2005), The Art Institute of Chicago (2011), The de Young Museum, San Francisco (2012), and The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas (2015).
Ralph Eugene Meatyard Untitled, 1960
© The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco