Article on William Eggleston - let's discuss

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/01/theory-william-eggleston-tender-cruel.html

I don't want to start the discussion and influence how it takes off, it at all. I found some really interesting concepts on photography, it's meaning, it's execution and it's place within the article.

Read it to the end and let's hear your opinion on the piece.

I look at the images, and then read the text, and there is a disconnect.

Well maybe you could expand on that?

I once had a 8mm film movie camera. (Actually I still have it 60 years later) It had a switch on the side that allowed me to take one frame at a time. I thought it was a great cheap way to take lots of photos and I did. Of all kinds of things, with no reason other than I could and that it was nice to freeze a moment in time without regard to what I was freezing. When I develope the film, I would place it in my movie projector and index the film one frame at a time looking at all the pictures I took.

That's what Eggleston's pictures remind me of. I don't understand why anyone would make a big deal out of his work. It's like he walked around and pressed the shutter aiming at nothing in particular. But along come the galleries and experts with their "Oohhs and Aahhs".

At first pass I had similar impressions however I have spent some time with them now. I see where they are an insightful style that puts a frame around this environment at the time. I think they speak on several levels, it just takes a bit to get beyond the mechanical photography approach and see into them. At least that's how I see it.

Further, it’s dangerous when everyone starts thinking in the same way—there is no controversy, no friction between peers. Without friction, we all become static and boring. I feel that the collective group of photographers out there aren’t putting their own brush strokes into their work. We aren’t capturing an idea, rather just a moment, thusly it's sometimes hard to stop and search for the idea in someone elses work.

The majority of us are camera operators, obsessed with settings and techniques instead of focusing on concepts and our own unique vision. So what’s the meaning behind your work? Where does your camera end, and your idea begin? Were does Eggleston's camera end and his idea begin?

um, , , , I was/am influenced by True stories, a film by David Byrne, egggleston collaborated on this movie, and book. if you get a chance, find the book there are some great photos in there. His color work is exciting . no question about that.

greg zinselmeier said:

um, , , , I was/am influenced by True stories, a film by David Byrne, egggleston collaborated on this movie, and book. if you get a chance, find the book there are some great photos in there. His color work is exciting . no question about that.

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What makes his work "exciting" to you?

I don't think Eggleston thinks about much except when he is going to get his next drink.

Patrick Robert James said:

I don't think Eggleston thinks about much except when he is going to get his next drink.

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I realize it's like pulling hens teeth to get photographers to think about "photography" rather than just the mechanics of the process. However I fail to see how your comment furthers the discussion.

Eric Rose said:

I realize it's like pulling hens teeth to get photographers to think about "photography" rather than just the mechanics of the process.

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I admire your pluck in attempting to do so
Still, I expect that you'll see plenty of anti-critical/anti-academic inverted snobbery in this thread anyway.

Well written article, showing some critical nous.

I think the fragment of analysis that piqued my interest is the comment about Steichen, although in my reading of photographic history it's really Stieglitz that stands out as the figure who imposes his view of photography, of photographs as "art objects" to be judged with special criteria that aren't applied to other media. Perhaps it was the Stieglitz/Steichen "axis" that brought that about. Stieglitz was a powerful and massively influential voice in the development of American photography, and his ideas (those of a wealthy and immensely privileged man, whose education and milieu was resolutely 19th Century) often still dominate discussion of what makes a "good" photograph.

You can see them repeated over and over in discussions at APUG - that a photograph is the print, that it is to be "perfect", scratches & dust all eliminated, with particular tonality. printed on fine paper, and mounted in exquisite frames, so that it can be looked at upon a wall ... and so on.

The paradigm for Stieglitz was really the idea of the fine etching, that a fine photograph should share those characteristics. His Camera Work was notoriously expensive to produce, wasn't just a set of photographs in halftone.

With that as a dominant aesthetic, no surprise that someone like Eggleston might be greeted with dismay and an "Emperor's new clothes" mentality.

Interesting that he and a few others (Ed Ruscha being the best known probably) chose to publish in book form, where the Steichen/Stieglitz "quality" would be subsumed to the impact of the overall images. I think that's really rather important, especially when so many bang on (here and elsewhere) about the importance of the "fine print".

The reality is that extraordinarily few of us have seen more that a few hundred of these finest-of-the-fine prints, and that the very largest number of us have been exposed to the photography of "the greats" by reproductions - often pretty indifferent ones - in books and magazines.

The idea of the photographic print as a collectable item, with a particular value in the "art market" (the latter a modernist invention itself lets not forget, and we've even got a little skirmish going on in another thread about value) I think limits some people's freedom to express themselves photographically. They can't produce that "exhibition print" that (seemingly) everyone bangs on about, so they don't see themselves as a real or proper or expressive photographer. That seems a shame, and a waste of talent.

So anyway, thank you Eric for giving me the opportunity to ride my hobby-horse a bit

Best line in the article is from Walker Evans that colour is vulgar and its therefore the best medium for a vulgar world. Seems apropos for the current scene.

eric

thank you for posting this. i have only known a tidbits of William Eggleston's work.
i remember someone here years ago was going to some of his suburban street corners and rephotographing them, that
was the first time i had ever heard of William Eggleston.
i think a lot of photographers and critics love to hate his work because it "seems so simple and boring"
they look like snapshots, they look likey anyone can do what he is doing and do it just as well or better.
how can he be considered a "photographer or artist" look what he is doing, there is no rhyme or reason to what he is doing
but in the end i think he is just as much, if not more of a documentary photographer/"artist" than a lot of the people who
are acclaimed .. his work really does what a documentary photographer TRIES to do but often times fails: creates a sense of place.
boring, out of focus, drive by, gauche colors, like anyone took them, but that is the point.
no matter where we live most of the time we are oblivious to pretty much everything around us.
we have no idea what our neighborhood looks like, our neighbors, what the signs are, where we are and he has created a massive time capsule, something
that we should all be able to learn from. sure, he isn't adams, or stieglitz or walker evans .. they had different reasons for pushing their shutter button down
and he had different reasons too. while i don't shoot much color, i realate more to what William Eggleston was doing than most of the other names i have heard
in rants and fan-boy threads. it is the little details in life, in what is around us that we forget as the days turn into years. a lot of photographers
spend too much worry about "the perfect everything " ... i am sure they create beautiful images, but there is so much tied into the technique
(to me at least) a lot of these images just become really interesting in a technical way, but less interesting in a "i can relate" kind of way.
even the wya he had dye transfer prints made ( and if you want you can go the teh William Eggleston trust and buy a dye transfer portfolio ! )
it hits home what is important. only masterpieces deserve to be printed in such a time consuming expensive way, how could anyone want to
turn a simple snap shot photograph of a tricycle or a street corner in a boring suburban plat as a dye transfer image ... and that's the point ...

What I like about Eggleston is his color palette, which he was able to highly control in post-processing his dye transfer prints. The colors are intense, yet not lurid. In the tricycle image, the red of the handlebar grip and the green of the body are quite likely not accurate, but are beautifully complementary, and make the tricycle stand out against an otherwise washed out background. Another example is the car in the image at the top of the article. That is not a Detroit standard color. You see this in a quite a number of his other photographs. This type of manipulation is now freely accessible via software, but then was only available with dye transfer instead of the ubiquitous color papers of the time.

I like Eggleston quite a bit. I was fortunate enough to walk his recent show at David Zwirner in NYC (closed Dec 17) and it was pretty amazing, with enormous prints from his 35mm negatives. They might have been four feet on their longest dimension, and were beautiful to my eye, at least in a gallery setting.

Just to add to the discussion in case you've missed it there was an interesting article on NYT a short while ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/...rapher-interview-augusten-burroughs.html?_r=0

Another aspect of Eggleston's work is that consciously or unconsciously he forces us to think about the banality of life while at the same time capturing the chaos of self.

I agree with what has been said about the obsession with the f64 ethos. Perfection is the endgame, with reputations built on the mechanics of the image process rather than human expression. Sure I can be blown away by an AA print but does it challenge me emotionally? No. Do all photographs have to challenge you emotionally, of course not.

Edward Weston was able to marry the f64 mentality with artistic expression in my opinion. However he wasn't as obsessed with process and making a name for himself as AA was.

My first wife was a painter who dabbled in photography. Her technique was hap hazard and God forbid you shared a darkroom with her. There were chemicals flying everywhere. She took little interest in shutter speeds and f stops beyond making sure her exposures were in the ballpark. In the end what she produced was extraordinary. It grabbed you and spoke to different people on many different levels. It's unfortunate that her life became trapped in severe mental illness.

The NYT's article is well worth a read. Fascinating and disturbing, just like his images.

I approve of the discussion of philosophy here and want to say something clever, but...
Let me say, I don't care for colour myself , finding it too difficult to compose well in this world of cacophonous colour.
and I do not care for boring, out of focus, drive by, gauche photographs either.
I am always disturbed by the feeling that I am being had. That the movers and shakers of Photography are really all about creating a vocabulary and priesthood to interpret for us the progress and validity of photography, in exchange for which we give power and money back.
It would be more compelling if the interpretation of such work wasn't usually simply a statement of fact.
"like anyone took them, but that is the point." What if that is not actually a point?
"turn a simple snap shot photograph of a tricycle or a street corner in a boring suburban plat as a dye transfer image ... and that's the point."
is that really a point?
"he forces us to think about the banality of life" Is this desirable? Does the photograph that forces us to think about the banality of life, have to been banal itself?
"Still, I expect that you'll see plenty of anti-critical/anti-academic inverted snobbery in this thread anyway."
I guess here it is, but I don't feel that way. What if the critics and academics are really creating a circular wanking experience?
PS I also feel Mike Disfarmer is a bit of a Gallery put on as well.
Not that we need agree on everything anyway and I know I am stuck in modernist and Pictorialist photography any way.

You ask some perfectly legitimate questions. I'm guessing your answers to them are largely negative, but I can't be sure.
One of the problems with the relentlessly cynical anti-intellectual response is that it is rarely accompanied by much in the way of alternative analysis short of "its all bollocks" or "anyone could do that" or "my kid could do better", or even simply "the images should speak for themselves & we don't need all this analysis".
As for me, one of the most remarkable things about humans is our capacity to reflect abstractly about physical manifestations such as art. Seems a shame not to exercise that capacity and take it seriously.

cowanw said:

I approve of the discussion of philosophy here and want to say something clever, but...
Let me say, I don't care for colour myself , finding it too difficult to compose well in this world of cacophonous colour.
and I do not care for boring, out of focus, drive by, gauche photographs either.
I am always disturbed by the feeling that I am being had. That the movers and shakers of Photography are really all about creating a vocabulary and priesthood to interpret for us the progress and validity of photography, in exchange for which we give power and money back.
It would be more compelling if the interpretation of such work wasn't usually simply a statement of fact.
"like anyone took them, but that is the point." What if that is not actually a point?
"turn a simple snap shot photograph of a tricycle or a street corner in a boring suburban plat as a dye transfer image ... and that's the point."
is that really a point?
"he forces us to think about the banality of life" Is this desirable? Does the photograph that forces us to think about the banality of life, have to been banal itself?
"Still, I expect that you'll see plenty of anti-critical/anti-academic inverted snobbery in this thread anyway."
I guess here it is, but I don't feel that way. What if the critics and academics are really creating a circular wanking experience?
PS I also feel Mike Disfarmer is a bit of a Gallery put on as well.
Not that we need agree on everything anyway and I know I am stuck in modernist and Pictorialist photography any way.

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I do care for color in photography, but man I feel helpless to make it myself (although I try sometimes). Black and white simplifies things so that I can understand them.

But I like Eggleston's color, his subject matter, his compositions, and the feeling of place and mood he achieves in his work. I never feel like I'm being had, nor do I feel that way when I'm viewing all the other styles of photography that I enjoy. I just like them, and I let that be enough. I know Eggleston and his work are pretty far 'out there', but that's cool with me, and in reasonable doses I dig him. For some folks 'reasonable doses' is exactly one picture and they're ready to move on before the con is complete. That's cool too.

I own the Eggleston documentary "In The Real World". I have watched it several times and it is always inspirational to me... even though I have no interest in street photography. I like the man and his work and I don't mind if he drinks. I just looked, and that documentary is on you tube if you search for it, but it is blurry for some reason. You can rent it from netflix.
Dennis

Hi Eric,

koodos on your genuine curiosity about the artist. He is by far my favourite artist and i've had the pleasure of actually meeting him in person in Memphis; lovely man. Anyways I think his work is very misunderstood and people think he just shoots half-assedly and I times I do agree it seems that way because not all of his shots work for me but the ones that do are a pure HOMERUN and nobody else seems to be able to hit it out of the park like him for me. The are many reasons I think so but one of the reasons I love his work is that on his shots that work for me (and theres so many), he is able to incorporate several subtle motifs that make the picture what is it. Look at the car picture at the beginning of the article for example; I love that one. First off theres the teeth like grill of the car, theres the antenna with the thing at the end of it, theres the angle he took the shot and closeness to the cement, the crookedness of the license plate, and theres also the guy to the right watering his lawn. Now to many that is boring but to me its the subtle "beauties" of life that we overlook consistently on a daily basis and that Eggleston was able to capture. I highly recommend the book "Chromes" but its pretty tough to come across and I had to pay $1000 for a copy but I think that's a great collection of his earlier work. Again are they all masterpieces? I don't think so, but the ones that are I am amazed how they still are able to capture my attention even after seeing them for 50th time. Also I disagree with linking his work with any type of photo-journalism. The beauty of his work is that each one can stand alone and doesn't need to be part of a collection/theme and isn't trying to say anything deep except exactly what you see; i.e. a subtle moment of beauty in everyday life. Anyways that's my two cents.

I wonder if Eggleston is tapping into that appreciation for and amazement we felt as kids. I can remember going to a fair and just sitting there watching the interaction of things, people, shapes and colours. That's probably not a bad thing.

This is predictable stuff coming from me but I'll post it anyway.

William Eggleston repays study. From a cultural point of view his art trajectory exemplifies the way acclaim arrives, accumulates, and hardens into fame. And its good to study the person as well. From the articles, interviews, and videos I've seen William Eggleston is a man of wit and humour, without conceit, and unharmed by the fuss made over his pictures. Under similar circumstances I might not find myself so serene.

William Eggleston does not make (never has) the key pictures credited to him. Many hardworking, talented, creative, and anonymous people do that. There are no money limitations. He can hire the best.
Sure, there's a deep tradition of artists not executing their own work but I'd love to see something from his own hand.

Eggleston can do a lot of camera work without limitations of time, place, and budget. Immense personal wealth has its advantages. We do not see the thousands and thousands of images that his picture-making workers couldn't turn into something supporting the much praised Eggleston "style".

Eggleston may have an intense but narrow talent and a glorious capacity for pictorial self-indulgence but his status is reinforced by the bullet-proof fame that came from being promoted by John Szarkowski who rose to head of photography at MOMA in 1962. Szarkowski's predecessor, the grand and imperious Edward Steichen, had established photography as a major force in world sensibility via his Family of Man blockbuster to name just one initiative. Steichen's predecessor, Beaumont Newhall, had embedded photography in the on going and creditable tradition of art history via his writings, scholarship, and exhibitions.

Now Szarkowski had to make his own mark, a dramatic break with the past, and he chose to do it by lionising colour pictures. Of the bodies of work available at the time the output of William Eggleston was enticingly convenient. Eggleston was (and is) an amazingly prolific visual magpie, a multi-millionaire with thousands of off-topic, off-beat, non-traditional images. He also had three qualities that ensure sympathetic reception at MOMA; an American photographer producing images of American subject matter for an American audience.

The rest is recent history but I think from a long perspective the William Eggleston adventure will be seen as John Szarkowski's biggest and most successful ploy. In these latter days an Eggleston style is irrelevant. There are probably no pictures (or some other artistic emanation) that would make William Eggleston un-famous, un-revered, and un-adulated. Once beatification in the art-world is complete celebrity has its own irresistible momentum.

One could succumb to envy.

As much as I like his color palette, I just wish I didn't have to have a graduate degree in art theory to properly appreciate Eggleston's photographs.

faberryman said:

As much as I like his color palette, I just wish I didn't have to have a graduate degree in art theory to properly appreciate Eggleston's photographs.

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I don't think you need a degree or an advanced degree to appreciate Eggleston's work. Just use your own language and find ways to communicate what strikes you as interesting, or not. Some with the fancy sprinkles after their names like to poo poo anyone who doesn't use their language. It's a tribal thing. We the uneducated are just a different tribe and we use our language. Not wrong, just different.