Excerpt from Issue #13  1000 Words Magazine.  

Out in Portland, Oregon, Raymond Meeks is making photographs and publishing exciting books.  He has made conventionally produced books with Nazraeli Press and has also self-published.  For his self-published volumes, rather than follow the "zine" model, making books with cheap digital printing and throwaway production value, Meeks is doing the opposite, producing exquisite, largely hand-crafted, limited edition books.  They are expensive but made with great care and attention to fine bookcraft, an approach that ensures they are amongst the most desirable photobook objects currently around.  Indeed, at the time of writing, the book I am reviewing is pretty well sold out, but I feel the work should be talked about and celebrated.

Meeks is also part of what seems to be an interesting new generation of American photographers - post New Topographical you might call them - who are regarding America's heartland with a fresh eye, an eye informed by both the country's rich heritage and the desire to tell stories about a society that, at this particular moment in time, seems unusually unsure of itself.  Although not provincial in any way, it's a non-metropolitan outlook, a non New York outlook, if you like.  Inspired certainly by Robert Adams, and such figures as John Gossage and Alec Soth, it is generating some intriguing photobooks, like Christian Patterson's "Redheaded Peckerwood", the hot photobook of the moment, or Doug Rickard's "A New American Picture".