This theme includes example sections and will be revised and added to as we proceed. Suggestions for additions, improvements and the correction of factual errors are always appreciated.
The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater (1974) by Ralph Eugene Meatyard was published posthumously after his death in 1972. The world depicted is unsettling where normality is thrown out of balance with the character "Lucybelle Crater" wearing a Halloween-style mask in what would otherwise be family snapshots of American suburban life. Masked children photographed in abandoned buildings, backyards and in woods should denote play and innocence but here there are darker undercurrents of menace.
In his 2004 essay Guy Davenport, a poet and friend of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, wrote that the series has:
"... exactly the right touch of unusual into an authentically banal American usualness,”
The name Lucybelle Crater is taken from the mother and daughter characters Lucynell Crater in the Flannery O'Oconnor story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own".
As with the photographs of the "Old South" of decaying structures and graveyards taken by Clarence John Laughlin symbolic interpretations remain unresolved.
