The legendary, mysterious photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–72) lived in Lexington, Kentucky, working in a close-knit community of artists and writers while making his living as an optician. Ralph Eugene Meatyard: American Mystic, by esteemed art historian Alexander Nemerov, is a groundbreaking study of Meatyard’s work, creative thinking and sources of inspiration.Given rare access to the personal library in which Meatyard had tellingly annotated works of fiction, poetry and other pages of personal significance, Nemerov examines the artist’s process of creating characters and staging dreamlike scenes. American Mystic also considers the artists and writers whose work influenced Meatyard, such as William Blake, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Thomas Merton -- Publisher's website.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and held at the Art Institute of Chicago, July 2-Sept. 25, 2011; the De Young Museum, San Francisco, Oct. 8, 2011-Feb. 26, 2012, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, May 19-Aug. 5, 2012.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Stages for Being was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title held at the University of Kentucky Art Museum, September 8-December 9, 2018 and Bates College Museum of Art, October 25, 2019-March 28, 2020.

A celebratory collection of essays and photographs, originally published as part of an effort to preserve Red River Gorge from plans to build a dam and a man-made lake, shares the T. S. Eliot Award-winning writer's perspectives on the gorge's wild beauty and the nature of rivers. Reprint.

Edited by James Rhem.

"Correspondence between Thomas Merton and Ralph Eugene Meatyard": p. 65-75.