Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
- Meatyard, Ralph Eugene, 1925-1972
- Meatyard, Ralph Eugene, 1925-1972
Other form(s) of name
- Ralph Eugene Meatyard
- Gene Meatyard
- Meatyard, Gene
- Ralph Meatyard
- Ralph Eugene Meatyard
- Gene Meatyard
- Meatyard, Gene
- Ralph Meatyard
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Ralph Eugene Meatyard was a optician by trade in Lexington, Kentucky, but was an avid photographer who would become influential in the art photography world for his haunting and surreal images. He first met Merton in January of 1967 on a trip from Lexington with poet Jonathan Williams and Guy Davenport (see Merton's journal entry from January 18, 1967). Meatyard took some photographs of Merton playing bongos, standing with a staff in a corn field, in his hermitage, in his habit but with a baseball cap, etc. In some of the last years of his life before dieing of cancer, he collaborating with another friend of Merton's, Kentucky author Wendell Berry. Meatyard's photographs are part of the collections at the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, and the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.