The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater

by Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Originally published in 1974 by the Jargon Society and long out of print, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater is the best-known body of Ralph Eugene Meatyard's work. At once comic and tragic, grotesque and beautiful, the series of 64 images features his wife, Madelyn, in a hag's Halloween mask together in each with a different friend or relative in a transparent mask. Original copies of this small but seminal work now sell for upwards of $500.00. Critic and scholar James Rhem has worked closely with the archives in the photographer's estate, as well as directly with his surviving family members to reconstruct Meatyard's original, and unrealized, intentions for the publication of this project. As a result, this revised edition features the correct sequencing of images and, most importantly, the missing captions, which, in accordance with Meatyard's instructions, are reproduced in his own handwriting as white type knocked out of a black background. In addition, each surviving participant in the Lucybelle Crater project has been interviewed by Rhem, and the book includes a critical essay and extensive background information. Accompanying the "Album" are 40 more figurative works establishing a context for it and exploring important themes in Meatyard's work. This is an improtant rediscovery in the history of American photography.

Genres: Photography, Art

84 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

Meatyard purchased his first camera in 1950 to photograph his son, Michael. He eventually found his way to the Lexington Camera club in 1954, and at the same time joined the Photographic Society of America. It was at the camera club that Meatyard met Van Deren Coke, an early influence behind much of Meatyard's work. He even exhibited work by Meatyard in an exhibition for the University entitled 'Creative Photography' 1956.

During the mid 1950s he would attend a series of summer workshops, run by Henry Holmes Smith and Minor White. Minor White in particular fostered Meatyard's interest in Zen Philosophy.

He continued to make work, usually in bursts during holidays, in his makeshift darkroom in his home, until his death in 1972. His approach was somewhat improvisational and very heavily influenced by the jazz music of the time.[1]

Ralph Eugene Meatyard's death in 1972, a week away from his 47th birthday, came at the height of the "photo boom", a period of growth and ferment in photography in the United States which paralleled the political and social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. It was a time of ambition, not reflection, a time for writing résumés, not thoughtful and inclusive histories; in the contest of reputation, dying in 1972 meant leaving the race early. It was left to friends and colleagues to complete an Aperture monograph on Meatyard and carry through with the publication of The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater (1974) which he had laid out and sequenced before his death.

While he lived Meatyard's work was shown and collected by major museums, published in important art magazines, and regarded by his peers as among the most original and disturbing imagery ever created with a camera. He exhibited with such well-known and diverse photographers as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, and Eikoh Hosoe. But by the late 1970s, his photographs seemed consigned to appear mainly in exhibitions of "southern" art. In the last decade, however, thanks in part to European critics, Meatyard's work has reemerged, and the depth of its genius and its contributions to photography have begun to be understood and appreciated. In a sense Meatyard suffered a fate common to artists who are very much of but also very far ahead of their time. Everything about his life and his art ran counter to the usual and expected patterns. He was an optician, happily married, a father of three, president of the Parent-Teacher Association, and coach of a boy's baseball team. He lived in Lexington, Kentucky, far from the urban centers most associated with serious art. His images had nothing to do with the gritty "street photography" of the east coast or the romantic view camera realism of the west coast. His best known images were populated with dolls and masks, with family, friends and neighbors pictured in abandoned buildings or in ordinary suburban backyards.

Reviews

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that holds personal value because Ralph is a fellow Kentuckian and lover of its natural beauty as well as a family friend. My aunt Joy is pictured in some of his photos and I was named after his wife, whom my mother adored and whom I came to know as a child. I never got to meet Ralph but he nonetheless touched my life and I love this book because it allows me to peer into a part of my mother and her sisters' lives that I will never know.

[Sean Kottke · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first encounter with Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s photography was an exhibit at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, which turns out to have been a rather influential visit on my reading diet for 2023. Charlotte went through the exhibit before me, and as she exited while I entered, she remarked, “some pretty freaky stuff in that last room.” That gallery housed a selection of photos from this series, and it enthralled and disturbed me. This book presents the whole series, with additional works from Meatyard’s oeuvre for context and interpretive essays. The series is a celebration of an extended family, by blood and camaraderie, to which Meatyard was saying goodbye. The masks create an abstract family out of a specific familial & social circle, and there’s a playfulness in the arrangements, seemingly casual yet composed to reveal personalities under the masks known only to insiders. The captions are playful, too, with wordplay and in jokes reminiscent of Joyce, again invisible to the outsider, who sees a casual photo album scribble. In fact, the chiasmus in the captions and the overall arrangement of images gives me Finnegan’s Wake vibes, and it’s not too much of a stretch to connect Lucybelle Crater to Anna Livia Plurabelle. And for all that, it is also seriously freaky, like The Residents, which have their own connections to Joyce.

[Avi O · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was cool and weird

[Carolina de Goes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love this stuff! Lucybelle rocks!

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential work that deserves five stars but the reproductions of this haunting photo series are fairly poor, looking overly dark and smudged.

[Susan Klinke]

i had to abondon this. it's way overdue at the library and i can't renew it. i look forward to reading it at a later time.