[Emblems&Rites]

Throughout the 1960s Meatyard traveled around Kentucky on the weekends with his family and took staged photographs. He typically chose the setting first and then arranged his tableau of people and props before it. Many of his photographs feature his own children wearing freakish dime-store masks and posing in front of abandoned houses and buildings. Meatyard used masks to eliminate or obscure differences among the pictured individuals. He was also interested in movement and willingly included the blurriness of a moving head or arm, lending a dreaminess or ghostliness to his photographs.