Ralph Eugene Meatyard at DC Moore

#48 ID, 1968-72. Gelatin silver print, 6 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.

 

As a child I spent a lot of time in the woods.  I went through a phase where I was afraid to be alone there.  My father told us kids stories of a little old woman who lived in an isolated cabin.  She was a witch.  If you found the cabin, it meant you were lost and you would never return.  It was his version of a bedtime story.  For a bunch of kids growing up in a cabin located a quarter mile off the main road, surrounded by miles of uninterrupted woods, the story rang a chord of truth and warning in my mind that could not be disputed.   I would walk into the woods and sense the presence of a dark and mysterious figure just in the periphery of my vision.  I would turn my head quickly to find an irregularly shaped stump-not the old witch.  With shot nerves I would run back to the house as quickly as I could.  It wasn’t as fast as it could have been.  I was never a runner.

Untitled, 1961. Gelatin silver print, 7 1/2 x 7 3/4 in.

Years later, the cabin still stands, the woods, although smaller, still remain, and now that I have Meatyard’s photographs in my mind, my old fears of figures haunting the woods have been remembered and re-imagined with vigor.   

 

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, “Occasion for Diriment” (1962), Gelatin silver print, 7.25 x 7.25 in (Guy Davenport Collection, Harry Ransom Center © The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard; all images courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art)

Meatyard’s images investigate focus and lack thereof.  It appears he has found the impossible line between blurry enough to not see clearly and focused enough to know that what you are looking at is terrifying.  There are children in the woods wearing masks of elderly faces, children in the woods climbing through sharp brush.  There are images depicting the limbs of child and limbs of tree in a strange, petrified parallel.  There are dark places with only enough light to see the outline of a small figure that couldn’t quite be human.  There are haunting images of common, mundane sheds, old barns, outhouses from another era, standing in places people no longer go.   As disturbing as Meatyard’s images of his kids and wife (and their various masks and doll parts) are, they are hauntingly beautiful.  The show closes December 23.  This is not one to miss!

More to read at Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/184926/the-suburban-dad-who-took-the-1960s-eeriest-photos/

 

More at: http://www.dcmooregallery.com/exhibitions/2015-11-19_ralph-eugene-meatyard