Raymond Meeks

Raymond Meeks (born 1963) is an American photographer.

"Much of his work focuses on memory and place, and captures daily life with his family."

He has published a number of books including Pretty Girls Wander (2011) which "chronicles his daughter's journey from adolescence to adulthood"; and Ciprian Honey Cathedral (2020), which contains symbolic, figurative photographs taken in and around a new house, and of his partner just before waking from sleep.

Meeks is co-founder of Orchard Journal, in which he collaborates with others.

Pretty Girls Wander (2011) "chronicles his daughter's journey from adolescence to adulthood."

In 2016 he received a Siskind Fellowship Grant from the Aaron Siskind Foundation and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship.

His work is held in the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Light Work in Syracuse, NY, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Meeks was born in Columbus, Ohio.

He has lived in Providence, Rhode Island and the Catskill Mountains, New York.

He once had a career as a commercial photographer, travelling all over the U.S. "to photograph anonymous hotel rooms".

"Much of his work focuses on memory and place, and captures daily life with his family."

Ciprian Honey Cathedral (2020) contains symbolic, figurative photographs taken in and around a new house, and of his partner just before waking from sleep.

Vince Aletti, wrote in Photograph Magazine, that "he finds a certain harsh beauty in its [Providence, Rhode Island's] wastelands that allies him with the best of the New Topographics crew."

Parr and Badger include Meeks, along with Mark Steinmetz, Susan Lipper, Gregory Halpern, Deborah Luster, Ron Jude and Doug Rickard, in "an interesting new generation of US photographers – post-New Topographical, one might call them . . . they are quixotic and individualistic, and are looking at America's heartland with a collective fresh eye informed by both the country's photographic heritage and a strong desire to tell American stories at a time when the country seems unsure of itself."

Meeks says about his practice:

“I’ll work for a while making pictures, most often within walking distance of my backyard—observations and occurrences that make up the fabric of daily life, so that I make work where I find myself wanting to spend time with a person or a subject, oftentimes dictated by the type of experiences that I want to have in the world.

I’m not a prolific photographer.

I don’t always have a camera on me.

I spend more time without a camera, in part because the moment I have a camera, the thing I’m interested in eludes me—I don’t see it.

I have to experience it without a camera first, and then hope that there’s some semblance of it when I go back to photograph that can capture what drew me towards it the first time.

I’m really slow to visually organize and make sense of things, so I have to experience the things I’m drawn to a lot—quite frequently—before I can photograph, which is why I end up photographing close to home, because it’s a subtle feature in a landscape I drive past the hundredth time that finally informs a picture.”

Meeks often self-publishes limited edition handmade artist's books under the name Dumbsaint Editions; these artist’s books are “raw and improvisational objects, sometimes housed in casings fashioned from foam core and strips of wood, sometimes comprising loose leaves bound together with adhesive tape, or filled with pages on which prints are made on the back of pages stripped from other books.”

Meeks is co-founder of Orchard Journal, in which he collaborates with some of his contemporaries.

Parr and Badger include Orchard Volume 1: Crime Victims Chronicle, by Meeks and Luster, in the third volume of their photobook history.

Meeks' work is held in the following permanent collections: