Fantômes de l’écrit chez Ralph Eugene Meatyard

• Main Author: Jean-Marc Victor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" 2016-12-01
• Series: Sillages Critiques
• Subjects: intersemioticity; Ralph Eugene Meatyard; Light on Water; Notes on the Keyboard of the Imagination; Zen Twigs; American photography
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/4661

Throughout his short career, American photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925-1972) incorporated into his pictures various physical manifestations of written signs, as well as traces mimicking the act of writing. Posters, graffiti, street signs, newspapers, fading painted letters appear as ghostly texts in company with human beings (family, friends) with which they seem to engage in a mysterious relationship. Even his more abstract pictures recording calligraphic shapes drawn by light on water, or showing minimalistic natural forms (twigs, marks of frost) are reminiscent of some undecipherable handwriting. This paper proposes to analyze the complex modes of reception generated by such intersemiotic strategies on the part of a photographer who was strongly influenced by his vast knowledge of literature and many literary friendships formed in the context of the American South in the 1950s and 1960s.