Jump to content

What type of photography does William Eggleston do?


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 85
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Color!

Seriously. Sometimes the “subject” of the photo is something other than the object in it.

 

In his early encounter with Eggleston’s work, Szarkowski described it as a suitcase full of drugstore color prints)

 

Eggleston talked about his own work in terms like the “democratic camera.” Maybe that’s a good category to label it.

 

While it may be hard to slot Eggleston into a one-word category, southern writer Eudora Welty describes it nicely in a few …

 

"The extraordinary, compelling, honest, beautiful and unsparing photographs all have to do with the quality of our lives in the everyday 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!"

  • Like 2

"You talkin' to me?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

His reply "Often people ask what I'm photographing, which is a hard question to answer. And the best what I've come up with is I just say: Life today."

 

"I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around, that nothing was more or less important."

 

William Eggleston

 

My answer... interesting and significant.

n e y e

Link to comment
Share on other sites

William Eggleston could show an enormous variety of large high-class colour prints of familiar, even banal, American subject matter to an American audience most flattered to discover they were surrounded by art which ever way they turned.

 

From a photographic technique aspect Eggleston shot a lot of film but had others do the developing and printing. One should also remember that Eggleston was a multi-millionaire to whom any quantity of film and laboratory services, however elaborate, were effectively free of charge. And because he didn't need to work for a living he could use a camera all day every day or smooze with rich friends and important figures in the art world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

William Eggleston could show an enormous variety of large high-class colour prints of familiar, even banal, American subject matter to an American audience most flattered to discover they were surrounded by art which ever way they turned.

 

From a photographic technique aspect Eggleston shot a lot of film but had others do the developing and printing. One should also remember that Eggleston was a multi-millionaire to whom any quantity of film and laboratory services, however elaborate, were effectively free of charge. And because he didn't need to work for a living he could use a camera all day every day or smooze with rich friends and important figures in the art world.

So, we must disrespect an artist who comes from a wealthy family and has the means to pursue a dream? I guess artists supported by patrons are on the chopping block, too. Now, we judge art by the artist’s bank account. Fabulous.

 

My understanding is that Eggleston made his own dye transfer prints, but I’m not an Eggleston savant so I could be wrong. My somewhat educated guess is that he had a strong aesthetic influence on the outcome of his prints, regardless. If he didn’t do his own printing, he certainly wouldn’t be the only great and influential photographer who didn’t.

 

Let’s give Maris a camera to use “all day every day” and see if Maris comes anywhere near the kind of body of work Eggleston did. Or, as many like to meritlessly claim, let’s give that camera to my six-year-old, who could do as well. On second thought, let’s not!

  • Like 1

"You talkin' to me?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eggleston gave up the 'darkroom' when he started color work. The dye transfer process was very specialized and time consuming. And yes it was extremely expensive. But none of these factors undermine the work and vision required to put it to good use as Eggleston has. As Eggleston proves the vision & process starts before the exposure is made and continues until it is presented.

n e y e

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, we must disrespect an artist who comes from a wealthy family and has the means to pursue a dream? .......

No! No disrespect to William Eggleston. He is a man of many achievements and possibly his gun collection or his camera collection are marvels beyond the photographic works credited to him.

 

But he has been beatified by the art establishment and it is now difficult to look at the pictures except through the heavy filter of praise that has been heaped upon them. Which in a sense does him a disservice because it muddles the question whether the pictures genuinely good in themselves or because of the qualities ascribed to them by others.

 

It's a perennial problem in the art world; has been for centuries

 

And no disrespect to William Eggleston for being wealthy. Others with access to unlimited funds have followed a similar trajectory: lots of camera work, hire the best to do the rest, move in social circles that include prominent and supportive influencers.

 

Think of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Eliot Porter, and Annie Leibovitz taking that path to unchallenged fame.

 

And compare this to photographers who did excellent work but got no lifetime celebrity. Think Eugene Atget and Vivian Maier.

 

I'd concede there's no moral dimension to all of this. It's just the way fate unfolds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But he has been beatified by the art establishment and it is now difficult to look at the pictures except through the heavy filter of praise that has been heaped upon them.

I don’t have difficulty taking the photos for what they are. Consider that this difficulty may be your issue. How or whether you choose to deal with it is your call.

Think of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Eliot Porter, and Annie Leibovitz taking that path to unchallenged fame.

Though both were successes and widely celebrated, Mapplethorpe and Leibovitz both faced significant challenges. Their kind of success may seem like an easy and straight path forward, especially to naysayers, but they worked plenty hard and sometimes worked against odds.

 

Some of Mapplethorpe’s early work was rejected outright by galleries because of its “pornographic” nature. Even once very successful, he got significant blowback from some African American influencers who felt he was continuing a tradition of objectifying and separating African American men. These are real issues, despite whatever glory anyone thinks he simply reveled in.

  • Like 1

"You talkin' to me?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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. Recently I made my first YouTube video documenting a behind-the-scenes of my photo walk around Neihu in Taipei (
). I wasn't sure how to title it as both street and documentary categories did not fully describe that style of photography. I would argue that this style is like a mixture of those two. The closest work that I could compare it to was the work of William Eggleston (The Democratic Forest - William Eggleston) or Takuma Nakahira (Overflow - Takuma NAKAHIRA | shashasha 写々者 - Delivering Japanese and Asian Photography to the World) - and I am obviously not saying in any way that my photographs are as good, just the style. I feel that calling it street or documentary is misleading, hence my question.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think 'documentary' is a style.

A Walker Evans photo of a grocery store is documentary in nature and style. An atmospheric, heavily-shadowed night shot of that same store with lamppost lights reflecting in sidewalk puddles is likely to be film noir in style. The film noir is a more subjective take than the documentary and each is a different style of photographing. The film noir, however, as you say, has an element of also being a document, but that doesn’t mean we can’t understand the two different styles as such.

"You talkin' to me?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Documentary "nature" may emerge from a photograph over time no matter the photographer intended it or not, at the point, perhaps, when the object(s) photographed attract viewers' attention more than the photograph itself. I think that occurs over time, seeping in or emerging from, the photograph.

 

Eggleston, for me, could see it at the time and place in which the objects photographed were mundane and commonplace. The kitchen sink linked to above is no longer commonplace and mundane in the world of those who would attend an exhibition of his photos.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Documentary "nature" may emerge from a photograph over time no matter the photographer intended it or not, at the point, perhaps, when the object(s) photographed attract viewers' attention more than the photograph itself. I think that occurs over time, seeping in or emerging from, the photograph.

 

Eggleston, for me, could see it at the time and place in which the objects photographed were mundane and commonplace. The kitchen sink linked to above is no longer commonplace and mundane in the world of those who would attend an exhibition of his photos.

All I'm saying is that documentary is, among many other things, an understood genre of photography. That all photos may have some elements of documentary to them doesn't change the fact that most of us know what we mean by the genre called documentary photography. It's not German Expressionism, even though I've seen German Expressionist photos that have documentary aspects or qualities.

"You talkin' to me?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...