No. 14: Guy Mendes - Lexington Camera Club

Art Throb

Episode No. 14 of the Art Throb Podcast features Guy Mendes, a Lexington photographer who began his photographic career almost by accident. A young transplant from New Orleans, he arrived at the University of Kentucky in 1966 hoping to become a journalist. The following year, he attended a rally to hear Wendell Berry speaking out against the Vietnam War. The two struck up a friendship that would eventually lead him to Eyeglasses of Kentucky, Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s optical shop and gallery where he would hang out in hopes of getting to tag along on photographic expeditions Meatyard and his friend Robert C May would take.
While at UK Guy apprenticed under the late James Baker Hall (author/ photographer/UK faculty/and former Kentucky poet laureate). He then went on to teach photography at UK himself for 14 years. His day job was at KET, where he was an award-winning documentarian as a writer/producer from 1973 until he retired in 2008.
Guy Mendes has been photographing seriously, and sometimes not so seriously for over 50 years. His most recent exhibition was a portrait show at the University of Kentucky Art Museum in 2022.
Several of his photographic works are in the current show titled CONJURE at the Loudoun House/Lexington Art League that will run Sept 17 – October 13. This exhibition features work by 30 members of the Lexington Camera Club with 6 guest artists – teenagers from the northside of Lexington. It is also part of the greater exhibition of photographs in the Louisville Photo biennial that was started in 1999 by four East Market Street Galleries in Louisville and has grown to now include more than 50 photographic exhibits at venues throughout Metro Louisville, Southern Indiana and Central Ky. The Art League and the Downtown Library are the two Lexington participants.