William Eggleston, American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries. Egglestons 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 curb. 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 Egglestons lens: [Egglestons] 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. American artist Edward Ruscha said of Egglestons work, When you see a picture he’s taken, you’re stepping into some kind of jagged world that seems like Eggleston World.”
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 01:40:57 +0000
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