What type of photography does William Eggleston do?

By the way, I wouldn’t classify Eggleston’s photos as documentary but can see why someone might.

My motivation behind asking this question was not to try to put a label on Eggleston per se, but to start a discussion about a photography style that doesn't seem to have a name.

Have fun with it and create your own 'name' for it... There's a long history and tradition of creating new categories, labels in photography. And resisting labels ...

'life today' WE democratic

I have returned to being a 'naive photographer' TN diarist

By the way, I wouldn’t classify Eggleston’s photos as documentary...

 

Neither would I.

And I mean the photographs of the everyday, banal, ordinary things; not the ones with people. Is it street photography, documentary photography, a mix, or something else? What are your thoughts?

He has written about his photography. He can explain what he is doing a lot better than anyone here probably can. Have you read any of his writings about his work?

‘Although Eggleston certainly trains his lens on human subjects, in some ways his photography is more about the human environment – the space around the human – than the human subject itself. This is an important sub-genre in street photography.‘

He has written about his photography. He can explain what he is doing a lot better than anyone here probably can.

Not necessarily:

 

”Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it’s just about impossible to follow up with words. They don’t have anything to do with each other.”

–William Eggelston

 

Artists are often the least able to explain themselves or their work.

 

That being said, I like reading what they have to say but also like reading what other informed people have to say about an artist's work. They can be very different perspectives and give a well-rounded sense of the person and their work.

‘Although Eggleston certainly trains his lens on human subjects, in some ways his photography is more about the human environment – the space around the human – than the human subject itself. This is an important sub-genre in street photography.‘

Neat quote. Who said it?

Neat quote. Who said it?

 

Canadian street photographer, Michael Sweet. He continues:

 

"Others, like Cartier-Bresson, more seamlessly integrated the human and the environment – his photographs were about both, equally. Others still, such as Cohen or Gilden, focus in on the human aspect almost to the complete disregard of the surrounding environment. All three styles have attracted scores of more contemporary emulators with most street photographers falling loosely into one of these three camps. Regardless of where your focus may be, it is important to be familiar with each of these three approaches to street photography. Eggleston’s Guide is a superb example of how the banality of everyday life can be engaging, poignant, and critical to our understanding of ourselves and our society. It is a must study for any serious street photographer, especially those who prefer to present in color."

Canadian street photographer, Michael Sweet.

Thanks.

a superb example of how the banality of everyday life can be engaging, poignant, and critical to our understanding of ourselves and our society

For me, as importantly, how the banality of a subject can be transformed via photography into something interesting and compelling ... because of the nature of photos, because of the instinct and thoughtfulness of the photographer to create a body of work around it, and because of how the seers of photos see and think.

Though I replied to Don above, so his name shows above the quote, obviously that quote is not written by Don, just graciously supplied by him!

Not necessarily:

 

”Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it’s just about impossible to follow up with words. They don’t have anything to do with each other.”

–William Eggelston

 

Artists are often the least able to explain themselves or their work.

 

That being said, I like reading what they have to say but also like reading what other informed people have to say about an artist's work. They can be very different perspectives and give a well-rounded sense of the person and their work.

 

Actually, I think he did a pretty good job of talking about it and what it means to him and I'm more interested in that then I am in what let's say John Szarkowski who in many ways helped launched his career had to say about him. But it's all interesting. Szarkowski had a lot to say about him. In any event, Google is your friend. And then there is one's own response to the work. If the OP wants to know what Eggleston's thoughts about it, I would at least start with the horse's mouth. OP might want to look at I believe his forward to Democratic Forest where he talks about photographing "democratically".

Edited September 10, 2021 by http://www.photo.net/barryfisher

To each their own.

He can explain what he is doing a lot better than anyone here probably can.

I'm more interested in that then I am in what let's say John Szarkowski who in many ways helped launched his career had to say about him.

I see the matter of explaining art, and experiencing and understanding it, less competitively and more cooperatively or at least conjointly.

afterward ASX. or afterword as my 1989 copy reads. There is also a tasty link to the ASX channel for other Eggleston work at the bottom of the page. Edited September 10, 2021 by inoneeye

Would i dare mention again that the genre in general is called Kitchen Sink? Edited September 10, 2021 by q.g._de_bakker

From Szarkowski’s Intro to William Eggleston’s Guide …

The simplicity of these pictures is (as the reader will have guessed) not so simple. When Alfred H. Barr, Jr., first saw a selection of slides from this series in 1972 he observed - surprisingly but in fact accurately - that the design of most of the pictures seemed to radiate from a central, circular core. In time the observation was relayed to Eggleston, who replied, after a barely perceptible hesitation, that this was true, since the pictures were based compositionally on the Confederate flag - not the asterisk, or the common daisy, or the dove of the Holy Ghost, but the Confederate flag. The response was presumably improvised and unresponsive, of interest only as an illustration of the lengths to which artists sometimes go to frustrate rational analysis of their work, as though they fear it might prove an antidote to their magic.

 

Barr's comment however is valuable, and suggests in concrete terms a quality central to Eggleston's work: a lean, monocular intentness that fixes the subject as sharply as if it were recalled from eidetic memory.

Artists themselves tend to take absolutist and unhelpful positions when addressing themselves to questions of content, pretending with Degas that the work has nothing to do with ballet dancers, or pretending with James Agee that it has nothing to do with artifice. Both positions have the virtue of neatness, and allow the artist to answer unanswerable questions briefly and then get back to work. If an artist were to admit that he was uncertain as to what part of the content of his work answered to life and what part to art, and was perhaps even uncertain as to precisely where the boundary between them lay, we would probably consider him incompetent.

 

I once heard William Eggleston say that the nominal subjects of his pictures were no more than a pretext for the making of color photographs - the Degas position. I did not believe him, although I can believe that it might be an advantage to him to think so, or to pretend to think so. To me it seems that the pictures reproduced here are about the photographer's home, about his place, in both important meanings of that word. One might say about his identity.

 

If this is true, it does not mean that the pictures are not also simultaneously about photography, for the two issues are not supplementary but coextensive. Whatever else a photograph may be about, it is inevitably about photography, the container and the vehicle of all its meanings. Whatever a photographer's intuitions or intentions, they must be cut and shaped to fit the possibilities of his art. Thus if we see the pictures clearly as photographs, we will perhaps also see, or sense, something of their other, more private, willful, and anarchic meanings.

If it is true, as I believe it is, that today's most radical and suggestive color photography derives much of its vigor from commonplace models, this relationship is especially strong in the case of Eggleston's work, which is consistently local and private, even insular, in its nominal concerns. The work seen here, selected from an essay of 375 pictures completed in 1971, is on the surface as hermetic as a family album. It is true that much of the best photography of this century has been created from materials that one would, from an objective, historical perspective, call trivial, for example, the wheel and fender of a Model T Ford, or the face of an anonymous sharecropper, or the passersby on an urban sidewalk; but these materials, even if slight in terms of their intrinsic, specific importance, are nevertheless public and potentially exemplary, and thus available as the carrier of symbolic freight. Eggleston, however, shows us pictures of aunts and cousins and friends, of houses in the neighborhood and in neighboring neighborhoods, of local streets and side roads, local strangers, odd souvenirs, all of this appearing not at all as it might in a social document, but as it might in a diary, where the important meanings would be not public and general but private and esoteric. It is not clear whether the bucolic modesty of the work's subject matter should be taken at face value or whether this should be understood as a posture, an assumed ingenuousness designed to camouflage the artist's Faustian ambition.

 

Preoccupation with private experience is a hallmark of the romantic artist, whose view is characteristically self-centered, asocial, and, at least in posture, antitraditional. If Eggleston's perspective is essentially romantic, however, the romanticism is different in spirit and aspect from that with which we are familiar in the photography of the past generation. In that more familiar mode, photographic romanticism has tended to mean the adoption and adaptation of large public issues, social or philosophical, for private artistic ends (an activity that might be termed applied romanticism, as distinct from pure Wordsworthian independence), and it has generally been expressed in a style heavy with special effects: glints and shadows, dramatic simplicities, familiar symbols, and idiosyncratic technique.

 

In Eggleston's work these characteristics are reversed, and we see uncompromisingly private experience described in a manner that is restrained, austere, and public, a style not inappropriate for photographs that might be introduced as evidence in court.

I see the matter of explaining art, and experiencing and understanding it, less competitively and more cooperatively or at least conjointly.

I haven't a clue of what you're talking about. I'll experience W.E.'s art democratically:)

It seems that Szarkowski is basically saying "don't listen to him, it's b.s., listen to me. And I wouldn't be surprised if W.E. would purposely go contrary to some of Szarkowski's presentments simply because, at least in his writing, he seemed to take himself so damned seriously.

If you read the statements of yours I quoted, you may see them as I do, as competitive, focused on whose words are more interesting in your mind, Eggleston’s or Szarkowski’s, and whose explanations are better, Eggleston’s or the folks in this thread. I’m telling you that rather than concern myself with who’s more interesting and who has better explanations, I’m prone to taking it all in and getting what I can out of all of it. So, while you’re experiencing Eggleston’s art democratically, I am as well. The difference is I’m also experiencing opinions and explanations democratically, which may interestingly be nicely compatible with Eggleston’s work. You seem to be treating the artist as more of an authoritarian in terms of his statements about his own work, something I think Eggleston might well reject.

Okay Sam if you say so. You might note that I said I would at least start with the horse's mouth. Seems to imply that other takes would be useful too. It would be ironic for me to say he is an authoritarian the same time I'm echoing his statement of photographing "democratically". You seem to want to put words in my mouth. All I said is I'm more interested in Eggleston's discussion of his work, then others. Is that a problem?

It would be ironic for me to say he is an authoritarian the same time I'm echoing his statement of photographing "democratically".

Your treating him authoritatively (authoritarian seemed to work in opposition to democratic but was too hyperbolic on my part) is different from your calling him authoritative. That’s the irony. You know he’s not an authoritative kind of guy yet you give his words authority over others, like Szarkowski, who’ve had great insights as well as the benefit of objectivity and historical expertise. I take them side by side. You take one before the other. I will let you decide which seems more democratic.

All I said is I'm more interested in Eggleston's discussion of his work, then others. Is that a problem?

It’s not a problem for you to do so. It would be a problem for me to do so. A problem for me … because I’m equally interested in both.

To expand, the weight I give to an explanation is often determined more on the substance of what’s said than who said it. Of course, there are times when being the artist will give some priority to what the artist says, more often about his process than about his own art. But there are times when I’ll give more weight to what a critic has to say if I think he’s bringing in art historical knowledge and significant aesthetic concepts that are relevant to the things he’s saying. A critic can be supercilious, overly pedantic, or off track. An artist can be self indulgent, intentionally evasive or downright full of b.s. So, I start out by giving anyone commenting an equal chance, most often determining the weight I give them by what they say. Sometimes, their history as a commentator will play a role in the weight I give them. But, no, I don’t think artists, or Eggleston in particular, are necessarily deserving of more of my interest in their words because they’re the ones who made the art. I think there are some great thinkers who better tap into verbal descriptions and insights.

I surrender Sam :) Thanks for sharing your opinion and beliefs.

How to speak volumes with subtext. Well done.

How to speak volumes with subtext. Well done.

Well said too.