Name: The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater: Recalling the Artist, Family, and the Newly Imagined
Start: 2026-10-07T14:00:00-0400
End: 2026-10-07T14:30:00-0400

The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater: Recalling the Artist, Family, and the Newly Imagined

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:30pm EDT

Studio

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, an optician and self-trained photographer, is known for his abject works. Influenced by writers such as Ambrose Bierce and William Blake, Meatyard’s work explores links between real and imagined worlds which come to life in his photographs. Leveraging techniques such as long and double exposure, Meatyard elevates simple landscapes into dreamscapes. Would-be basic portraits are transformed into stills from horror films as grotesquely masked figures stand in abandoned, decaying spaces. What is abject to viewers, though, is familiar for Meatyard: his family and friends are often the subjects of these photographs, transformed into monsters through the masks. His final body of work, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, exemplifies this juxtaposition of strangers and family, playing upon the family artifact of photo albums by inserting unfamiliar, anonymized characters into what is typically used to remember family and precious memories. For Meatyard, this family album is multipurpose. It documents his family and friends, just like a photo album, captures his spirit as an artist, and also carries a narrative that must be supplied by the viewer. The anonymity and dreamlike atmosphere of his pieces abstracts the mundane just enough that viewers can project their stories upon the images. Thus, The Family Album becomes the perfect space to examine photographs as mnemonic devices that allow us to recall and create. This presentation will provide a brief overview of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, then dive into an exploration of his final body of work, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, examining how its numerous meanings can help researchers, educators, and viewers explore new ways to leverage photographs as mnemonic devices.

Speakers

Micaela Deogracias

Outreach and Engagement Librarian, Indiana University Bloomington

Micaela Deogracias is currently an Outreach and Engagement Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington. At the IUB Education Library, she is responsible for creating instructional opportunities to support students in the School of Education, particularly those relating to visual literacy... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:30pm EDT
Studio

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IVLA 2026 Charleston

Micaela Deogracias

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IVLA 2026 Charleston

Micaela Deogracias

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