Ralph Meatyard, Mythologizer of the Mundane

Ralph Meatyard was a great photographer, one who often traded in bizarre images. He lived and died in Kentucky in 1972. I remember visiting Kentucky a year later, and realizing it was a place of dark corners and hidden mysteries. Meatyard was a mythologizer of the mundane, who reflected some of these mysteries. He liked photographing masked subjects. His images were complex signifiers, loaded with meaning.

Here is a particular favorite image, from a series called Romance.