ABOUT

James Baker Hall, a photographer and a writer, was a friend of Gene Meatyard's. This monograph was begun in 1970, with Meatyard's approval, and finished after his death, with his wife Madelyn's assistance and blessing. Hall has been experimenting for some time now with more or less uncommon ways to bring words and pictures together; his text here, a series of free-floating prose poems based on his observations of Meatyard as a man and as an artist and on certain of his own childhood experiences, attempts to create a context in which the photographer's vision will be more readily accessible. Hall has taught photography at M.I.T. and at the University of Connecticut; his pictures have been published and exhibited widely. He is the author of a novel, Yates Paul, His Grand Flights, His Tootings, and numerous stories, poems, articles, and reviews which have appeared in such magazines as Popular Photography, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Quarterly, Field, and Place. Currently he is teaching creative writing at the University of Kentucky.

Guy Davenport, also a friend of Meatyard’s, provides a reminiscence. Poet, story writer, critic, scholar, translator, he is the author of The Intelligence of Louis Agassiz, Carmina Archilochi, Sappho, and a book of poems, Flowers and Leaves', a volume of his short stories entitled Tatlinl will be published soon by Scribner’s. His articles and reviews have appeared in such periodicals as The Hudson Review, The New York Times Book Review, Life, and Poetry. He is a Professor of English at the University of Kentucky.