200 Days, 200 Photo Books

Raymond Meeks: Sound of Summer Running

Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2004, ISBN: 1590051122

“Raymond Meeks’ Sound of Summer Running is the stuff that makes up the essence of our innocence. It is before the advent of the color; it is when life was surrounded by laughing children, slumbering dogs, flowing white dresses, ripening fruit trees and wiggling frogs in glass jars. This monograph came before all other Meeks’ books and his aesthetic has matured along with each publication, but do not believe that this book is elementary in its design nor the images in their composition. Sound of Summer Running was the first to present the vignetted, dreamy images of Meeks — a style that is visually consistent, but not contrived. Meeks, arguably unlike any other photographer, puts his life in his work for all to see and Sound of Summer Running is like the proverbial heart on the sleeve. Meeks’ handcrafted artist books and the more recently co-produced Orchard series show his sensitive perception and appreciation of his delicately balanced world, each in its own right an object to behold, but none can compare to the first.”

Melanie McWhorter, photo-eye magazine