Untitled

While other, more documentary-minded photographers in the postwar era attempted to capture a slice of the world as it whizzed by in front of their cameras, the Kentucky optician Ralph Eugene Meatyard joined a growing group of artists who preferred to create their own realities. His pictures were deliberate and directed; as he wrote in 1961, “I will never make an accidental photograph!” In his staged images, decaying houses served as scenery, dolls and masks as props, and his own family as actors. Here Meatyard’s oldest son, Michael, peers through the panes of a half-open door; two dolls, positioned more like sentries than toys, stand guard.