Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Perfectly Banal, Perfectly Boring....

That was the description a critic wrote in 1976, when William Eggleston had a solo show of full-color snapshot-like photographs at the Museum of Modern Art. It didn’t help that Mr. Eggleston’s pictures, shot in the Mississippi Delta, where he lived, were of nothings and nobodies: a child’s tricycle, a dinner table set for a meal, an unnamed woman perched on a suburban curb, an old man chatting up the photographer from his bed.
We now know the images quickly became influential classics.

“William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008” continues through Jan. 25 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Says the New York Times: "Although Mr. Eggleston rejects the label of regional photographer, he was, at least initially, dealing with the complicated subject of a traditional Old South (he says the compositions in his early pictures were based on the design of the Confederate flag) meeting a speeded-up New South, which he tended to observe from a distance, shooting fast-food joints and drive-ins almost surreptitiously, as if from the dashboard of a car."
bettershelter says: DO IT!

1 comment:

Cardboard said...

Love photos like these - thick slices of life that we all see (but usually miss) everyday.