William Eggleston (born July 27 1939) is an
American photographer. He is widely credited with
securing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries.
Early years
William Eggleston was born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in Sumner, Mississippi. His father was an engineer who had a failed career as a cotton farmer, and his
mother was the daughter of a prominent local judge. As a boy, Eggleston was introverted and enjoyed playing the piano, drawing,
and working with electronics. From an early age, he was drawn to visual media; he reportedly enjoyed buying postcards and cutting
out pictures from magazines. Eggleston was also interested in audio technology as a child.
At the age of fifteen, Eggleston was sent to the Webb School, a boarding school on Bell
Buckle, Tennessee. Eggleston later had few fond memories of the school, saying to a reporter, "It had a kind of Spartan routine
to 'build character.' I never knew what that was supposed to mean. It was so callous and dumb. It was the kind of place where it
was considered effeminate to like music and painting." Eggleston was unusual among his peers in that he eschewed typical Southern
male pursuits such as hunting and sports, in favor of artistic pursuits and observation of the world around him.
Eggleston attended Vanderbilt University for a year, Delta State College for a
semester, and the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) for approximately five
years, never earning a college degree. However, it was during college that his interest in photography took root; during his
first year in college, a friend gave Eggleston a Leica camera. Eggleston took art classes at Ole
Miss and was introduced to abstract expressionism by a visiting painter from New
York named Tom Young.
Artistic development
Eggleston's early photographic efforts were inspired by the work of Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank and by French photographer Henri
Cartier-Bresson's book, The Decisive Moment. At first photographing in
black-and-white, Eggleston began experimenting with color photography in 1965 and 1966, and color transparency film became his
dominant medium in the late sixties. Eggleston's development as a photographer seems to have taken place in relative isolation
from other artists. In an interview, John Szarkowski of New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) describes his first encounter with the young William Eggleston in 1969
as being "absolutely out of the blue." After reviewing Eggleston's work (which he recalled as a suitcase full of "drugstore"
color prints) Szarkowski prevailed upon the Photography Committee of MOMA to buy one of Eggleston's prints.
In 1970, Eggleston's friend William Christenberry introduced him to
Walter Hopps, director of Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery. Hopps later said he was "stunned" by Eggleston's work: "I had never seen
anything like it."
Eggleston taught at Harvard in 1973 and 1974, and it was during this period when
he discovered dye-transfer printing when he was examining the price list of a photographic lab in Chicago. As Eggleston later
recalled: "It advertised 'from the cheapest to the ultimate print.' The ultimate print was a dye-transfer. I went straight up
there to look and everything I saw was commercial work like pictures of cigarette packs or perfume bottles but the colour
saturation and the quality of the ink was overwhelming. I couldn't wait to see what a plain Eggleston picture would look like
with the same process. Every photograph I subsequently printed with the process seemed fantastic and each one seemed better than
the previous one." The dye-transfer process resulted in some of Eggleston's most striking and famous work, such as his 1973
photograph entitled The Red Ceiling, of which Eggleston said, "The Red Ceiling
is so powerful, that in fact I've never seen it reproduced on the page to my satisfaction. When you look at the dye it is like
red blood that's wet on the wall.... A little red is usually enough, but to work with an entire red surface was a
challenge."
At Harvard Eggleston prepared his first portfolio, entitled 14 Pictures (1974). This portfolio was comprised of
dye-transfer prints. Eggleston's work was featured in an exhibition at MOMA in 1976, which was accompanied by the volume
William Eggleston's Guide. The MOMA show is regarded as a watershed moment in the history of photography, by marking "the
acceptance of colour photography by the highest validating institution" (in the words of Mark Holborn). Eggleston's was the first
one-person exhibition of colour photographs in the history of MOMA.
Around the time of his 1976 MOMA exhibition, Eggleston was introduced to Viva, the Andy Warhol "superstar," with whom he began a
long relationship. During this period Eggleston became familiar with Andy Warhol's circle, a connection that may have helped
foster Eggleston's idea of the "democratic camera," Mark Holborn suggests. Also in the seventies, Eggleston experimented with
video, producing several hours of roughly edited footage Eggleston calls Stranded in Canton. Writer Richard Woodward, who
has viewed the footage, likens it to a "demented home movie," mixing tender shots of his children at home with shots of drunken
parties, public urination and a man biting off a chicken's head before a cheering crowd in New Orleans. Woodward suggests that
the film is reflective of Eggleston's "fearless naturalism—a belief that by looking patiently at what others ignore or look away
from, interesting things can be seen."
William Eggleston's Guide was followed by other books and portfolios, including Los Alamos (actually completed
in 1974, before the publication of the Guide) the massive Election Eve (1976; a portfolio of photographs taken
around Plains, Georgia before that year's presidential election); The Morals of
Vision (1978); Flowers (1978); Wedgwood Blue (1979); Seven (1979); Troubled Waters (1980); The
Louisiana Project (1980); William Eggleston's Graceland (1984) The Democratic Forest (1989); Faulkner's
Mississippi (1990), and Ancient and Modern (1992). Eggleston also worked with filmmakers, photographing the set of
John Huston's film Annie (1982) and documenting the making of David Byrne's film True Stories (1986). He is the subject of Michael Almereyda's recent documentary portrait William Eggleston in the Real World (2005).
Eggleston's aesthetic
Eggleston's mature work is characterized by its ordinary subject-matter. As Eudora Welty
noted in her introduction to The Democratic Forest, an Eggleston photograph might include "old tyres, Dr Pepper machines,
discarded air-conditioners, vending machines, empty and dirty Coca-Cola bottles, torn posters, power poles and power wires,
street barricades, one-way signs, detour signs, No Parking signs, parking meters and palm trees crowding the same kerb."
Eggleston has a unique ability to find beauty, and striking displays of color, in ordinary scenes. A dog trotting toward the
camera; a Moose lodge; a woman standing by a rural road; a row of country mailboxes; a convenience store; the lobby of a Krystal
fast-food restaurant -- all of these ordinary scenes take on new significance in the rich colors of Eggleston's photographs.
Eudora Welty suggests that Eggleston sees the complexity and beauty of the mundane world: "The extraordinary, compelling, honest,
beautiful and unsparing photographs all have to do with the quality of our lives in the ongoing world: they succeed in showing us
the grain of the present, like the cross-section of a tree.... They focus on the mundane world. But no subject is fuller
of implications than the mundane world!" Mark Holborn, in his introduction to Ancient and Modern writes about the dark
undercurrent of these mundane scenes as viewed through Eggleston's lens: "[Eggleston's] subjects are, on the surface, the
ordinary inhabitants and environs of suburban Memphis and Mississippi--friends, family, barbecues, back yards, a tricycle and the
clutter of the mundane. The normality of these subjects is deceptive, for behind the images there is a sense of lurking
danger."
It may help to compare Eggleston's work to the work of another illustrious Mississippian, William Faulkner, who also drew subject matter from the Mississippi
Delta region that is the subject matter of much of Eggleston's art. Both Eggleston and Faulkner drew upon insights of the
European and American avant-gardes to help them explore their Southern environs in new and
surprising ways. As the writer Willie Morris wrote, Eggleston's "depiction of the rural
Southern countryside speaks eloquently of the fictional world of Faulkner and, not coincidentally, the shared experience of
almost every Southerner. Often lurid, always lyrical, his stark realism resonates with the language and tone of Faulkner's
greatest mythic cosmos of Yoknapatawpha County .... The work of Bill Eggleston
would have pleased Bill Faulkner ... immensely." Eggleston seemed to acknowledge the affinity between himself and Faulkner with
the publication of his book, Faulkner's Mississippi, in 1990.
Notable publications
The earliest commercial use of Eggleston's art was in the album covers for the Memphis group Big Star who used the famous Red Ceiling image. Later records also had other Eggleston images, including
the dolls on Cadillac hood. The Primal Scream album Give out but Don't Give Up features a cropped photograph of a neon confederate flag and a
palm tree by Eggleston.
In 1994, Eggleston allowed his long-time friend and fellow photographer Terry Manning
to use two Eggleston photographs for the front and back covers of the CD release of "Christopher Idylls," an album of ethereal
acoustic guitar music produced by Manning and performed by another Eggleston friend, Gimmer Nicholson.
In 2006, a William Eggleston image was coincidentally used as the both cover to Primal
Scream's single Country Girl and on the cover of the paperback edition of
Ali Smith's novel The Accidental while also used on the cover
of Chuck Prophet's "Age of Miracles" album in 2004.
In 2001, William Eggleston's photograph "Memphis (1968)" was used as the cover of Jimmy Eat
World's top-selling album Bleed American.
Appearances
Eggleston is featured in a print ad for Marc Jacobs clothing; also in the photo is
Charlotte Rampling. They were photographed by Juergen Teller.
Sources
- Eggleston, William (1989). The Democratic Forest. Introduction by Eudora Welty. New York: Doubleday. ISBN
0-385-26651-0.
- Eggleston, William; & Morris, William (1990). Faulkner's Mississippi. Birmingham: Oxmoor House. ISBN
0-8487-1052-5.
- Eggleston, William (1992). Ancient and Modern. Introduction by Mark Holborn. New York: Random House. ISBN
0-679-41464-9.
- Woodward, Richard B. (October 1991). "Memphis Beau." Vanity Fair.
- Eggleston Trust bio
PDF
External links
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Eggleston, William |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
|
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
American photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
1939 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
Memphis, Tennessee, United States |
| DATE OF DEATH |
|
| PLACE OF DEATH |
|
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