The legendary, mysterious photographer (1925-72) lived in Lexington, Kentucky, working in a close-knit community of artists and writers while making his living as an optician. This groundbreaking study by the art historian Alexander Nemerov looks at his work, his creative thinking and his 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 his process of creating characters and staging dreamlike scenes, and considers the artists and writers who influenced him, such as William Blake, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Thomas Merton. Lucybelle Crater and many of his other pictures cast family members and friends in central roles, often masked and enacting symbolic dramas. "For Meatyard, a photograph is a careful or casual arrangement meant to produce a feeling it cannot name."