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| #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.
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| 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
