A
FOURFOLD VISION
Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Hardbound, 11" x 12", 48 pages
32 duotone plates
2004, Nazraeli Press
Introduction by Emmet Gowin
“After treasuring the experience of having known Ralph Eugene
Meatyard at the turn of the 1970s, and then holding his work in
the highest esteem for the whole of my adult life, it is a sobering
joy to revisit these spontaneous, imaginative and transcendent
photographs again, thirty-six years later. Of course, the world
has changed and I have changed too, but the photographs themselves
continue to speak to us of a world beyond the one we normally
see. We live in a world of appearances and mental habits. The
profound and lyric photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard open us
up to at least a double world, a world where all that is invisible,
or only felt, or only dreamed, is as true, or as possible, or
as necessary, as the ground which holds us down . . . In this
book, these particular images are at least double exposures, and
it would be tempting to stop there, in the twofold world of double
vision. But Meatyard’s vision was of Blake’s kind,
fourfold, and of immense delight, or belonging at least to the
world of “sweet Beulah’s night.” I cannot show
you how this is true, but if you have seen it, if you have felt
it for yourself, you will know.” – From the Introduction
by Emmet Gowin
A Fourfold Vision
is published in association with the Fraenkel Gallery on the occasion
of an exhibition at the ICP, New York.
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