Cockfighter's Son, 1992
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
Michael Meads is a painter, photographer and teacher born in Eastaboga, Alabama in 1966. Originally intended as studies for his paintings and drawings, Meads’ photographs document his friends and acquaintances. As a result, they enable the viewer an intimate look at his immediate world, and document his community with a clear sense of place and time.
Raised in the heart of the Bible Belt, Meads was drawn to the difference and decadence of New Orleans since, as a boy, he first heard a Baptist minister warn of its wickedness from a radio broadcast. In 1998, he made New Orleans his home. The floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of his work in 2005, and now Meads divides his time between New Orleans and his studio in the arid landscape of rural New Mexico.
This photograph is a vintage cibachrome print from the Eastaboga series. Twenty-two works from this series are featured in the current exhibition of recent acquisitions, New Southern Photography. They represent a sampling of a much larger body of Meads’ photographic work given to the Ogden Museum through two donors, J. Michael Parish and Charles Canada. Charles Canada has also donated drawings and paintings from every period of Meads' career.
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