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Suzanne,
I was lucky enough to be in NY a few years ago while a Meatyard exhibition was on at ICP. I was quite affected by his work. Moved, disturbed, challenged, rewarded - many of the feelings art is capable of extracting. I went around the walls several times trying to figure out what was going on inside and underneath his work. I am still pondering!
Hi Suzanne, Thanks for posting this. I have liked Meatyard's work a lot ever since I first discovered it only a few years ago. I agree with a previous comment that most of his work somehow relates to identity. There is another one he did of his extended family that I think he called "Family Portrait" that I have always found haunting and thrilling in its simple genius. Thanks again for reminding me, I am going to the Library again.
Someone once said to me (in relation to drawing, but I think it applies broadly) that becoming a Real Artist was learning to do deliberately the things you initially did as mistakes.
Meatyard, perhaps because of his experience as an optician, was keenly aware of perception and of the potential for meaningful perception far from the "correct" rules-based norms of typical photography. He was willing to push at the boundaries and discover what they might mean.
Like Winogrand he seems to have been keenly interested in finding out what things looked like in photographs. The picture is not the thing.
Ultimately, all you have is the picture, in which Lucybelle Crater is as flesh-and-blood as anyone.
The work of Meatyard, Clarance John Laughton, and others doing similar non-realistic photography bother me. Not because I think that it's bad, but there's enough of it around to convince me that there must be a valid point of view which I don't understand it, and in fact means nothing to me either visually or intellectually. (This is different from the work of Whitkin, which I do not want to understand on any level.)
I think to want and try to understand images specifically ones created from within is akin to Ahab chasing the great white whale. One really can never understand and if you become obsessed with knowing or understanding it will likely end in disaster. Meatyard like many other artists and non-artists may not be looking for anything but rather atempting to articulate what they already know or feel. When you see your attemps eithen in a frame or as a poem, painting, etc you can't help but do it some more.
Chris
I also did not know about this photographer but I find his work very interesting, warranting a closer look. I do love the boy by the window, but I have a thing for windows. I generally don't know how to appreciate images that are out of focus unless there is a obvious reason such as the boy flying. The first image on the second link which is a scene from a forest that is completely out of focus escapes me. Thanks for keeping this series going as it has really taught me a lot.
it is interesting stuff. I'm not sure how much thinking needs to be done when looking at his stuff, so here is my first impression. The flapping boy seems to force the viewer to compare the somewhat accidental bird like creation to the child or vis versa -- yet in most of his images it is the people who are unstable/out of focus and the setting that is more concrete so I think we’re asked, or at least I am driven to see the wall first and the child 2nd. The masks take the people who are often in context and common out of context and not so common. The general discontent of viewing the people/children in masks is an interesting response. The trees are suffering from camera shake and are possibly out of focus. Like the other objects, blurry, shaken trees are not what we expect -- trees are solid not shaken. When I view the photographs I try to penetrate the masks and see the grocers as grocers etc... If they had no masks I might not look so hard at the people. I'll need to look and think on this some more. Good choice Suzanne.