Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Known for: mysterious masked figure photography in Kentucky

Ralph Eugene Meatyard worked as an optician in Lexington, Kentucky and made all his photographs as a self-taught amateur, producing images of masked figures in abandoned houses and overgrown gardens that drew equally on Zen Buddhism, the literature of Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Merton, and the formal possibilities of the twin-lens Rolleiflex he used throughout his career. His work was unknown outside a small circle in his lifetime and has been consistently reassessed upward since his death from cancer in 1972.