Review of Behind the Masks Portraits

The photographs discussed in Behind the Masks Portraits of Southern Gothic are interpretive. If the photographer didn’t engage his twist on the portraits when he included things such as the strange masks, broken windows, decayed houses, or the American flags coupled with not photographing them with blank stares or yawns they may be considered descriptive. Rather it is obvious that the photographer had intended for his viewers to interpret his work they gazed upon it. In a secondary sense the photographs could have also been considered slightly ethically evaluative since they went against the grain of the common portrait style that could be considered a notion it is a very strong one.

The paper also notes some of Meatyards landscapes and portraits of which no information is discussed. Later in life Meatyard studied with Aaron Siskind and Minor White. After they taught him the “finer points of black and white” he gained the influence of Zen in his photography. When I think of Zen I gravitate to empty thinking and meditative photography. This type of photography in my eyes is aesthetically evaluative since it’s about art and making things look good without any social issues. While these photographs do not relate to the title of the work Behind the Masks, Portraits of Southern Gothic they are about the photographer and hold descriptive importance to help the reader understand the photographer.

I sense that Grace Glueck reviewed Meatyard’s work with an open mind entered it with an expressionist mindset. While she did interpret his work you could tell she was less into it then when she described things such as the “finer points of black and white” and “he was intrigued enough by the photographic process to start a serious study in 1954 which post dates the photos talked about earlier. She also leashed out things with a negative connotation when describing his work with masks which included; most oddball, creepy, and grotesque. Although she had an open mind she likely had a preference for more of the realist and formalist images judging by what was noted above.

Grace’s criteria must have been more implicit since she did not come out and say it directly. While she did note explicit things such as “finer points of black and white” they didn’t lend themselves in favor of the images. Perhaps the antonyms of her evaluations would imply what she has embedded in her criteria. She did however use the word memorable when evaluating something but she did not attach it to a good memory or bad one which again lead to the implicit criteria.

Again Grace did not emphasize any theory in her writing. What I implied from the work itself was that it functioned as art that and the disguises added a sense of mystery to the images. What struck me was the thought that the masked may have implied death in death masks or a type of veil. While veils are also used in happy things such as weddings the undertone that Grace described led me to think one of the things it was about was death. People were also photographed around houses with broken windows which gravitate to decay as another subject matter. With regard to modernity the images are set up and heavily posed. By the writing it sounded like Meatyard took his time when executing the images he thought of.

Death and Decay is not the easiest subject to photograph mainly because of the taboo our society has placed on it. Seeing a photograph of a dead body is the easiest way the depict it but photographing the dead under forms of decay shifts to a little too morbid. A decaying dead body in a gallery would have more shock value then meaning. At the year of his death Meatyard photographed himself as old with “unkempt hair” on a umkempt grass hill. He is depicted through the last two images as getting up and leaving which lets us know that he has told his story.