Ralph Eugene Meatyard, who was an optician by profession, did not pick up a camera until he became a father. His children eventually became frequent subjects and collaborators in his work. Meatyard regularly staged scenes that show his children playing out open-ended fantasies in abandoned buildings and bucolic landscapes in the suburban environs of Lexington, Kentucky. The settings—in this case, the rough textures of tar paper and the dark recess of the windows from which his son Christopher emerges—shade the common format of the family snapshot with a sense of foreboding.