William Eggleston (born July 27, 1939)[1] is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition of color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston's books include William Eggleston's Guide (1976) and The Democratic Forest (1989).
William Eggleston was born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in Sumner, Mississippi. His father was an engineer and his mother was the daughter of a prominent local judge. As a boy, Eggleston was introverted; he enjoyed playing the piano, drawing, and working with electronics. From an early age, he was also drawn to visual media and reportedly enjoyed buying postcards and cutting out pictures from magazines.
At the age of 15, Eggleston was sent to the boarding school, the Webb School. Eggleston later recalled few fond memories of the school, telling a reporter, "It had a kind of Spartan routine to 'build character'. I never knew what that was supposed to mean. It was so callous and dumb. It was the kind of place where it was considered effeminate to like music and painting."[citation needed] Eggleston was unusual among his peers in eschewing the traditional Southern male pursuits of hunting and sports, in favour of artistic pursuits and observation of the world. Nevertheless, Eggleston noted that he never felt like an outsider, telling a reported that " I never had the feeling that I didn't fit in...But probably I didn't."[5]
Eggleston's development as a photographer seems to have taken place in relative isolation from other artists. In an interview, John Szarkowski describes his first encounter with the young Eggleston in 1969 as being "absolutely out of the blue".[citation needed] After reviewing Eggleston's work (which he recalled as a suitcase full of "drugstore" color prints) Szarkowski prevailed upon the Photography Committee of MoMA to buy one of Eggleston's photographs.
In 1970, Christenberry introduced him to Walter Hopps (director of Washington D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery). Hopps later reported being "stunned" by Eggleston's work: "I had never seen anything like it."[citation needed]
1970s
From 1973 to 1974, Eggleston taught at Harvard.[citation needed] During these years, whilst examining the price list of a photographic lab in Chicago, he discovered dye-transfer printing.[citation needed] As Eggleston later recalled: "It advertised 'from the cheapest to the ultimate print.' The ultimate print was a dye transfer. I went straight up there to look and everything I saw was commercial work like pictures of cigarette packs or perfume bottles but the color saturation and the quality of the ink were overwhelming. I couldn't wait to see what a plain Eggleston picture would look like with the same process. Every photograph I subsequently printed with the process seemed fantastic and each one seemed better than the previous one."[6]:16–17 The dye-transfer process resulted in some of Eggleston's most striking and famous work, such as his 1973 photograph The Red Ceiling, of which Eggleston said, "The Red Ceiling is so powerful, that in fact, I've never seen it reproduced on the page to my satisfaction. When you look at the dye it is like red blood that's wet on the wall... A little red is usually enough, but to work with an entire red surface was a challenge."[6]:28
At Harvard, Eggleston prepared his first portfolio, entitled 14 Pictures (1974).[citation needed]
In 1976, Eggleston's work was exhibited at MoMA. Although this was over three decades after MoMa had mounted a solo exhibition of color photographs by Eliot Porter, and a decade after MoMA had exhibited color photographs by Ernst Haas,[7][8][9] the tale that the Eggleston exhibition was MoMA's first exhibition of color photography is frequently repeated,[a]and the 1976 show is regarded as a watershed moment in the history of photography, by marking "the acceptance of colour photography by the highest validating institution".[6]:16
In 1976, Eggleston was introduced to Viva, the Andy Warhol "superstar", with whom he began a long relationship.[citation needed] During this period Eggleston became familiar with Andy Warhol's circle, a connection that may have helped foster Eggleston's idea of the "democratic camera", Mark Holborn suggests.[6]:21
According to Philip Gefter from Art & Auction, "It is worth noting that Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, pioneers of color photography in the early 1970s, borrowed, consciously or not, from the photorealists. Their photographic interpretation of the American vernacular—gas stations, diners, parking lots—is foretold in photorealist paintings that preceded their pictures."[10]
Some of his early series were not shown until the late 2000s. For example, The Nightclub Portraits (1973), a series of large black-and-white portraits in bars and clubs around Memphis was, for the most part, not shown until 2005.[11]Lost and Found, part of Eggleston's Los Alamos series, is a body of photographs that have remained unseen for decades because until 2008 no one knew that they belonged to Walter Hopps.[12] The works from this series chronicle road trips the artist took with Hopps, leaving from Memphis and traveling as far as the West Coast. Eggleston's Election Eve photographs were not editioned until 2011.[13]
Experimentation with video
In the 1970s, Eggleston also experimented with video, producing several hours of roughly edited footage Eggleston called Stranded in Canton.[citation needed] Writer Richard Woodward called this footage a "demented home movie",[citation needed] mixing tender shots of his children at home with shots of drunken parties, public urination, and a man biting off a chicken's head before a cheering crowd in New Orleans. Woodward suggested that the film is reflective of Eggleston's "fearless naturalism—a belief that by looking patiently at what others ignore or look away from, interesting things can be seen."[citation needed]
1980s
Eggleston also worked with filmmakers, photographing the set of John Huston's film Annie (1982) and documenting the making of David Byrne's film True Stories (1986).
Eggleston's 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 tires, 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 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!"[14] Mark Holborn, in his introduction to Ancient and Modern, writes about the dark undercurrent of these mundane scenes as viewed through Eggleston's lens: "[Eggleston's] 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."[6]:20 American artist Edward Ruscha said of Eggleston's work, "When you see a picture he's taken, you're stepping into some kind of jagged world that seems like Eggleston World."[5]
Music
In 2017, an album of Eggleston's music was released, Musik.[citation needed] It comprises 13 "experimental electronic soundscapes", "often dramatic improvisations on compositions by Bach (his hero) and Handel as well as his singular takes on a Gilbert and Sullivan tune and the jazz standard On the Street Where You Live."[15]Musik was made entirely on a 1980s Korg synthesiser, and recorded to floppy disks.[citation needed] The album was produced by Tom Lunt, and released on Secretly Canadian.[citation needed] In 2018, Áine O'Dwyer performed the music on a pipe organ at the Big Ears music festival in Knoxville, Tennessee.[citation needed]
512 (Secretly Canadian, 2023) – produced by Tom Lunt
Art market
In 2012, 39 of Eggleston's larger-format prints – 40 by 66 inches (100 by 170cm) instead of the original format of 16 by 20 inches (41 by 51cm) – sold for $5.9 million in an auction at Christie's to benefit the Eggleston Artistic Trust, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of the artist's work.[citation needed] The top lot, Untitled 1970, set a world auction record for a single print by the photographer at $578,000.[16] New York art collector Jonathan Sobel subsequently filed a lawsuit in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Eggleston, alleging that the artist's decision to print and sell oversized versions of some of his famous images in an auction has diluted the rarity—and therefore the resale value—of the originals.[17][18] The court dismissed the lawsuit.[16]
By the Ways: A Journey with William Eggleston (2007), directed by Vincent Gérard and Cédric Laty – selected for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival in 2006.[citation needed]
The Colourful Mr. Eggleston (2009), directed by Jack Cocker and Reiner Holzemer – an episode of the Imagine (TV series) for BBC One.
William Eggleston's Graceland (1984) (a series of commissioned photographs of Elvis Presley's Graceland, depicting the singer's home as an airless, windowless tomb in custom-made bad taste)[26]
The Hasselblad Award 1998: William Eggleston. Zurich: Scalo; Goteborg: Hasselblad Center, 1999. ISBN978-3908247982. Edited by Gunilla Knape. With essays by Walter Hopps and Thomas Weski, and a transcript of an interview with Ute Eskildsen.
William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961–2008. With a text by Elisabeth Sussman, Thomas Weski, Tina Kukielski, and Stanley Booth. Exhibition catalog.
For Now. Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishing, 2010. ISBN978-1-931885-93-5. Afterword by Michael Almereyda; short texts, "Eggleston, 1971" by Lloyd Fonvielle, "In Conversation with William Eggleston" by Kristina McKenna, "Two Women and One Man" by Greil Marcus, "Night Vision: The Cinema of William Eggleston" by Any Taubin, and a longer text "It Never Entered My Mind": (Answers to 11 frequently asked questions about William Eggleston in the Real World)" by Michael Almereyda.
From Black & White to Color. Göttingen: Steidl, 2014. ISBN978-3869307930. With an introduction by Agnès Sire ("The Invention of a Language"), essay by Thomas Weski.
↑Two examples: "[Eggleston] managed to convince [MoMA] to grant him their very first one-man exhibition of color photography" (Jim Lewis, "Kodachrome Moment: How William Eggleston's revolutionary exhibition changed everything", Slate, February 10, 2003); "a controversial but revolutionary exhibition in 1976—MoMA's first solo show to feature color photographs—and a classic accompanying book, William Eggleston's Guide" ("William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961–2008", Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2009).
↑"The Source". www.dougaitkenthesource.com. Retrieved February 1, 2026.
123Prodger, Phillip (2016). William Eggleston Portraits. Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same title at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 21 July to 23 October 2016. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ISBN9780300222524. p.175 ("Chronology").
↑"William Eggleston". Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. October 23, 2017. Archived from the original on December 12, 2024. Retrieved November 12, 2018.
Eggleston, William (1989). The Democratic Forest. Introduction by Eudora Welty. New York: Doubleday. ISBN0-385-26651-0.
Eggleston, William & Morris, William (1990). Faulkner's Mississippi. Birmingham: Oxmoor House. ISBN0-8487-1052-5.
Eggleston, William (1992). Ancient and Modern. Introduction by Mark Holborn. New York: Random House. ISBN0-679-41464-9.
Lindgren, Carl Edwin. (1993 Summer). "Ancient and modern". Review of Ancient and Modern by William Eggleston. Number, Volume 19:20–21.
Lindgren, Carl Edwin. (1993). "Enigmatic presence". Review of Ancient and Modern by William Eggleston. RSA Journal (Journal of the Roy. Soc. of Arts), Volume 141 Number 5439, 404.
Woodward, Richard B. (October 1991). "Memphis Beau". Vanity Fair.
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