The Inhabitants — Raymond Meeks. Published by MACK Books.
In response to being selected as the sixth laureate by the Fondation d’Hermès and his corresponding
residency in France, Raymond Meeks chose to focus on the places that have become stopping
points for countless migrants seeking refuge in Europe.
Meeks engaged poet and writer George Weld to bring other voices into the work, and The
Inhabitants is their collaborative effort, a richly layered tour de force of the marriage of photographs
and poetic text.
Through his primarily black-and-white images, Meeks conveys less a description of the landscape
than a sense of what it feels like to be in a strange land, and the longing and wonder inherent in
Weld’s intimate text is palpable.
The beauty of The Inhabitants, and it is very beautiful, is in the intertwining voices of photographer
and writer, neither dominant nor dependent on the other, but a fully realized experience enriched by
two artists of immense sensitivity.
Cheryl Van Hooven is a photographer and writer based in New York and often working in the California Mojave Desert. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints & Photographs, Imagery Estate Winery Permanent Collection at Sonoma State University, among others. Her photographs and writing have been published in Interview magazine, Details magazine, Puchong Folios and Vogue Italia. She is currently working on a photo/text book.