Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Meatyard’s staged images—set in abandoned spaces and often using masks and props—are at once familiar and enigmatic, reflecting the artist’s fascination with the uncanniness of ordinary life.

Using movement to follow luminescent, broken reflections in water, the artist’s experimental photographs create a free-form effect similar to qualities of Abstract Expressionist paintings.

Photographed in the open landscape or in simple rural environments, this series evokes the transcendental aspects of nature.

From 1957 to 1972, Meatyard undertook several different conceptual projects exploring the possibilities of abstraction in photography. In these works, he evokes a world not normally acknowledged with the human eye.

A meditative study of the mysterious forms of twigs and tree branches, inspired and informed by the artist’s deep study of Zen Buddhism.

Reducing groups of human figures to indistinct abstractions, the artist proposes an alternate notion to the traditional photographic portrait.