insights into photography
Time Out reviews the William Eggleston Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery until 23rd October 2016
©William Eggleston
Legendary Memphis photographer William Eggleston has created a whole genre of psychologically ambiguous Americana, much of it centred on apparently mundane bits of his home town. I expected that isolating his portraits from the rest of his work wouldn’t work. How would they fare, without all those existential landscapes and unanswered questions to problematise them? In fact, this show really makes you realise all over again this man’s extraordinary genius and oddness.
Two photos in this show, both from the early 1970s, really nail the whole Eggleston thing. The first is a tiny photobooth black-and-white self-portrait. In it, Eggleston seems remote: a fine-boned, bespectacled, Mahleresque face, a foppish college scarf, one of those monied, long-all-over haircuts. The second is a photo of his friend, weirdo Memphis dentist TC Boring. Boring is in the house in which he would later be murdered and incinerated. He is standing naked in a moment of reflection. The bedroom is blood red, with ‘God’ and ‘Tally Ho!’ sprayed on the wall. The colour hums, as though the print itself were struggling to keep Boring alive: it’s terrible, hilarious, disturbing and uncontrived, all at the same time. How did that man take this photo?
It’s one thing to imply alienation and dread with a grim motel room or a deserted parking lot. It’s quite another to manage to do so – as Eggleston does here – in a picture of your nephew sitting at home in an armchair. A portrait of the dead blues musician Fred McDowell in his casket is way less troubling than a shot of Eggleston’s wife taking a nap on a bed in front of a buzzing untuned TV and a sinister open closet. Time and again, Eggleston shows us that a picture of a person is never a simple thing.
This is not a big show, for a man who is supposed to have taken more than a million photographs, but I could spend a week in it, happily. Or a year. You have to see Eggleston’s work edited in this way. And you have to see his photos in the flesh (including Mr Boring’s knob). If I could give it six stars, I would.
If you have been on one of our courses we would have probably introduced you to Saul Leiter because we love his photographs. The Photographers Gallery in London has an exhibition of his work from 22 Jan – 3 Apr 2016. Now you can see his work as it should be seen, on the wall.
It’s only recently that Saul Leiter (1923-2013) has received due recognition for his pioneering role in the emergence of colour photography. He moved to New York intent on becoming a painter, yet ended up working for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Elle andBritish Vogue and became known for his impressionistic colour street scenes.
As early as 1946, and thus well before representatives of the 1970s new colour photography school (such as William Eggleston and Stephen Shore), Leiter was using Kodachrome colour slide film for his free artistic shots, despite it being despised by artists of the day.
“When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.” Saul Leiter
16–18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW
Mon – Fri: 10.00 – 18.00
Thu: 10.00 – 20.00 during exhibitions
Sat: 10.00 – 18.00
Sun: 11.00 – 18.00
From 121Clicks we found this article that has a decent spread of some of the greats of colour photography
They taught us the meaning of photography, the very smell of composition and the beautiful essence of lights and shadows. Their works teach us great insights on all aspects of photography. To say the least, We are happy to get some online presence of these stupendous works. In this post of ours, I wanted to bring you the best of the best photographs yet unseen from the ordinary.
Photo By: Vivian Maier
Photo By: Steve McCurry
Photo By: Martin Parr
Photo By: Saul Leiter
Photo By: Bruce Davidson
Photo By: Alex Webb
Photo By: Fred Herzog
Photo By: Raghubir Singh
Photo By: Helen Levitt
Photo By: Constantine Manos
Oddly no William Eggleston in this list so here are some
The BJP tells us that William Eggleston is to be awarded a prize for his outstanding contribution to photography, can’t even think what his honest response to that might be…..try any of these
I don’t have a burning desire to go out and document anything. It just happens when it happens. It’s not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn’t do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough. 
You can take a good picture of anything. A bad one, too. 
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.
I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around, that nothing was more or less important.
I am at war with the obvious.
I don’t look at other photographs much at all. I don’t know why. I study my own a lot.
There is no particular reason to search for meaning.
The way I have always looked at it is the world is in color. And there’s nothing we can do about that.
Untitled. 1695-1968 fr. Los Alamos, Beehive. Image © William Eggleston, Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.
Untitled. 1980 fr – Lousianna Project – Hot Sauce. Image © William Eggleston, Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.
Untitled, 1971-1974. Image © William Eggleston, Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.
Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2259431/william-eggleston-to-receive-outstanding-contribution-to-photography-award#ixzz2PtCaP0FC
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This is an interesting little spat that ended up in court and featured one of our favourite photographers William Eggleston
Celebrated American photographer William Eggleston won a legal victory last month when a judge in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York dismissed a claim of fraudulent and negligent misrepresentation brought by collector Jonathan Sobel. Sobel is an avid Eggleston collector who owns 190 of the artist’s prints and even helped finance a 2008 Eggleston retrospective at the Whitney Museum, where he is a trustee.
The legal dispute arose because Sobel owns an 11.75″ x 17.38″ dye transfer print of Eggleston’s famous Memphis (Tricycle) image, shown below, for which he reportedly paid $250,000. That print is one of an edition of 20 that was created in the 1980s. Last year a large format 44″ x 60″ inkjet print, authorized by Eggleston and made from a digital scan of the same film, was sold at a Christie’s auction for $578,500. Sobel argued that by creating a new set of large format inkjet prints beyond the 30-year old limited edition of dye transfer prints of the same image, Eggleston was diluting the value of the earlier Sobel-owned print. As Sobel told ARTINFO in an interview after filing his claim, ‘The commercial value of art is scarcity, and if you make more of something, it becomes less valuable.’ From DP Review, read the full article here
William Eggleston could be considered one of those annoying photographers who have great acclaim but seem to photograph just what is in front of him and it is then considered ‘art’. There is no doubt, that on one level the simplicity of his images and the feeling that they are only a stones throw away from being snap shots is frustrating. Frustrating because it is so difficult to pin down what makes them so absorbing. As with many artists when you show their work to people they either get it or they don’t, and this is telling; somehow those that do are more likely to become your friends. There is an outside nature to his images, domestic as many of them are you are still drawn to the edge by them. Should you be interested in Eggleston, well yes if you are interested in photography. Those photographers who provide decoration, amazing images but essentially decoration give you answers immediately but Eggleston mostly gives you questions and that is intriguing. “His first exhibit was a one-man show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This was the first photography exhibit to show solely color work. Up until that point, black-and-white was considered the only true photographic art form. The curator of the museum, John Szarkowski took a big chance. He loved the work. He called it perfect. Most didn’t consider it perfect though. The show was strongly criticized. Hilton Kramer, of The New York Times, wrote, “Perfect? Perfectly banal, maybe…perfectly boring, certainly.” Even Ansel Adams wrote to Szarkowski asking him what those photos were doing hanging on the walls of the MoMA.” (from Faded + Blurred) I think the point about Ansel Adams just reinforces my views on Eggleston.
As Nicole Rae says on the blog Faded + Blurred “Despite his often mundane subject matter, he is simply not your ordinary photographer. His first one-man exhibit at the MoMA in 1976 was both heralded as being genius and was criticized as being the most hated show of the year. Some see his work as being perfect – the angles, composition, color, everything pushing the edges. While others see a jumbled mess of boring things, just thrown together, like he just shot from his hip with no thought behind it whatsoever. Love him or hate him, William Eggleston changed photographic history and changed the way we look at the world.”
A potted history of his life and achievements starts in 1939, born in Memphis, Tennessee
1957 Acquires his first camera, a Canon rangefinder.
1958 Acquires his first Leica.
1959 Sees Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “The Decisive Moment” and Walker Evans’ “American Photographs”.
1965 Begins to experiment with color transparency film.
1967 Starts to use color negative film. Goes to New York and meets Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus. Presents his work to John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1974 Harry Lunn publishes the first portfolio of dye-transfer photographs, “14 Pictures.” Receives a Guggenheim Fellowship. Appointed Lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies at The Carpenter Center, Harvard University. Completes his “Los Alamos” project.
1976 The Museum of Modern Art exhibits work in first solo exhibition of color photographs accompanied by a monograph, “William Eggleston’s Guide.” Commissioned by Rolling Stone to photograph Plains, Georgia before the election of President Jimmy Carter. Project becomes “Election Eve,” the first of the artist’s books of original photographs published by Caldecot Chubb.
1978 Appointed Researcher in Color Video at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the invitation of Richard Leacock. Photographs the Gulf states on a commission from A.T. & T. Receives another award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Visits Jamaica.
1979 Chubb published three smaller volumes of original photographs, “Morals of Vision,” “Wedgwood Blue,” and “Flowers.”
1980 Travels to Kenya with Caldecot Chubb and creates a body of work known as “The Streets Are Clean on Jupiter.” Commissioned to produce the “Louisiana Project” and to photograph throughout the state.
1983 Begins to photograph in Berlin, Salzburg and Graz and titles the series “Kiss me Kracow”. Commissioned to photograph the mansion of Elvis Presley, Graceland.
1986 Invited by director David Byrne to visit and photograph the making of his film “True Stories”. Commissioned by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art to photograph in Egypt.
1988 Begins a series of color photographs of England he calls “English Rose”.
1989 Photographs in the orange groves of the Transvaal. Accepts one of 54 Master Photographers of 1960-1979 awards from Photographic Society of Japan. Plays the role of musician Jerry Lee Lewis’ father in the movie “Great Balls of Fire”.
1996 Commissioned by Coca-Cola to photograph their plants in four cities in the U.S. Invited by producer Caldecot Chubb to visit and photograph the making of the film “Eve’s Bayou”. Receives the University of Memphis Distinguished Achievement Award.
2000 Commissioned by Paramount Pictures to photograph studio lot in Hollywood, California. Commissioned by the Cartier Foundation to photograph the American desert.
2002 Travels extensively and photographs locations including Pasadena, California; the New Jersey Shore; Queens, New York; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Tuscany, Italy.
2003 Travels to and photographs the Niagara Falls area. Travels to Arles, France to attend Rencontres d’Arles and meets Henri Cartier-Bresson. Accepts Gold Medal for Photography from National Arts Club, New York.
2004 Receives the Getty Images Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Center of Photography (ICP) Infinity Awards. Travels to Hawaii and photographs with new panoramic format camera. Travels to Madrid to accept 2004 Photoespana Award. Travels to Clovis, New Mexico and photographs the city and Norman Petty Recording Studios.
2005 William Eggleston In The Real World, a documentary film on Eggleston by Michael Almereyda is completed. Travels to Xilitla, Mexico to photograph Las Pozas. Longtime advisor and friend, Walter Hopps dies. Invited and travels to Tokyo to be guest judge at Canon’s New Cosmos Photography Contest.
In between these many awards and citations he was commissioned to travel and photograph for corporations, national art bodies and film directors.
Eggleston said, “A photographer friend of mine bought a book of Magnum work with some Cartier-Bresson pictures that were real art, period. You didn’t think a camera made the picture. Sure didn’t think of somebody taking the picture at a certain speed with a certain speed film. I couldn’t imagine anybody doing anything more than making a perfect Cartier-Bresson. Which I could do, finally.”
More from Faded + Blurred by Nicole Rae “Although he started his career working in black and white, he soon changed to color. The biggest problem he found was getting the colors the way that he wanted them. He tried having them developed commercially, which didn’t give him the results he wanted. He then went to Kodak slide film, which still didn’t work. In the early 1970s, he came across a process called dye-transfer. Also used by the artist Robert Rauschenberg, dye-transfer is a long and complicated process involving separating the individual colors from the master negative. It was a technique used mainly for advertising but, when Eggleston saw it, he knew it was perfect for his prints. He often said he could never get his colors as rich or as saturate as he wanted until he started using this process.”
“Sometimes I like the idea of making a picture that does not look like a human picture. Humans make pictures which tend to be about five feet above the ground looking out horizontally. I like very fast flying insects moving all over and I wonder what their view is from moment to moment. I have made a few pictures which show that physical viewpoint. . . . The tricycle is similar. It is an insect’s view or it could be a child’s view.”WE
Nicole Rae again…”Color became the main subject in his photographs. The objects are secondary to how the color looks and fits within the composition. He has been highly influenced by artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, which you can see in his images. There are blocks of color, there are shapes, there are angles and lines. He is not concerned about his photographs having meaning behind them. He says, “A picture is what it is… It wouldn’t make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them.”
The William Eggleston Trust has a wide range of information on their site including details of all of his books, monographs and portfolios, also there is a list of articles and essays with links through to the original pieces where they exist on line.
From the Getty Museum site...“This plain, unassuming suburban house dominated by its television antenna could be titled Anywhere, USA. The image demonstrates William Eggleston’s interest in tract housing and particularly in new Southern suburbs. This theme runs through the over two thousand photographs of his seven-year “Los Alamos” project, for which he had actually photographed all over the United States. “
Nicole Rae says “Eggleston is able to simply capture moments, without being overly concerned with the why behind it. He takes one photograph and moves on. If he doesn’t get it the first time, he doesn’t go back to try to recapture it. The moment is over and he has moved on. His subjects are things most of us would consider to be boring, but he takes the everyday, often mundane objects in our lives and makes them beautiful. He turns them into works of art. If you look at each of his images and take the subjects themselves out and just see the color, shapes, and lines; seeing how it all fits together. That is art.”
There is an excellent TV documentary as part of the Imagine series and it can be found on line here
Many of his books are still available on Amazon and are beautiful and engaging, I recently purchased William Eggleston Guide from his first MOMA exhibition for £15 They might not be first editions but they are true to the originals and looking at images on paper is always better than on a screen, somehow it demands more of your attention. I also bought” Two And One Quarter” but I see it has now nearly doubled in price so get them while they are still cheap.
I had planned to write a long piece on Eggleston myself but having found the excellent Nicole Rae I found she had said all I wanted to say, so do go and visit Faded + Blurred, I will leave the last sage words to her
“When you look at Eggleston’s work, you get out of it what you get out of it. There is no correct interpretation of it, no right or wrong. It either affects you or it doesn’t. There is no reason behind it and maybe we need to stop looking for a reason. Maybe that’s what art is – just something that affects us on an emotional level. We don’t always need an explanation for it. Sometimes we can just look at an image and appreciate it for what it is without looking for something deeper.”
Eggleston has published his work extensively. He continues to live and work in Memphis, and travels considerably for photographic projects.
Here is another page full of pictures and editorial you may find useful Artsy
Self-taught photographer becomes first British winner of international prize for recognition of major achievements, writes Sean O’Hagan in The Guardian.
“Paul Graham has been named as the winner of the 2012 Hasselblad award, which is presented annually to “a photographer recognised for major achievements”. It is the first time a British photographer has won the prestigious international prize. Previous recipients include Robert Adams (2009), Nan Goldin (2007) and William Eggleston (1998).
Graham, who had a major retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in London last year, is a self-taught photographer. He was born in Buckinghamshire and discovered photography through the books of great American pioneers like Robert Frank, Walker Evans and Paul Strand. He has lived in New York since the early 1990s. Graham first garnered critical acclaim with his early documentary work, including A1 – The Great North Road (1983) , a series shot in colour along the British motorway, and Beyond Caring (1985), which was shot in unemployment offices. Back then, Graham was a pioneer of colour in Britain, his work influencing subsequent generations of young photographers.”………MORE
Pittsburgh, 2004 (Lawnmower Man)From the series ‘A Shimmer of Possibilities’. Copyright of the artist, courtesy of Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London.The Foundation’s citation regarding the decision to award the 2012 prize to Paul Graham is as follows:
“Paul Graham is one of the most brilliant photographers of his generation. During the course of his nearly 40-year career, he has presented an extremely focused body of work, at once perfectly coherent and never monotonous. In images both sensitive and subtly political, he makes tangible the insignificant traces of ″the spirit of the times″ we do not normally see. With his keen awareness of the photographic medium, he has constantly developed innovative forms of working with all aspects of photography. This makes him a profound force for renewal of the deep photographic tradition of engagement with the world.”
More of Graham’s pictures can be seen here
Toad Hollow photography, each week, put together a list of must see photography links to tutorials, galleries, photo blogs and essential stuff for the interested photographer. Have you noticed how most people who has a dslr lists photography as an interest or hobby but most of them only ever express that interest by buying the camera in the first place. You, looking here at our blog and being invited to travel the wonder web with us experiencing and enjoying the fantastic world of photography, are clearly not most people, you are a bit special.
Anyway here is the weekly round up from Toad Hollow via those nice folks downunder at Lightstalking
“The world of photography has produced some great work this week, and Toad Hollow Photography has been busy finding the best tutorials, photography and interesting blogs. Truly great images have been produced by some awesome photographers, and all the links listed here will take you to see them. We really hope you enjoy perusing this list as much as the Toad did in bringing it to you.”….MORE
William Eggleston – Red Ceiling
Here is a taste of this weeks offerings from TH
TUTORIALS
How to Photograph Your Fist Smashing Through a Wall of Water – a great video tutorial that shares some great tips, tricks and insight into this very interesting style of photography. High drama and intrigue await those who use this technique, producing some truly one-of-a-kind images.
Loire Valley Boathouse – Stressing the Focal Point in Photography – a compelling picture is accompanied by a very informative write-up that discusses the use of focal points in photography. Great tips, tricks and examples are brought together in the comprehensive post, sure to teach most everyone something of the subject.
14 Composition Techniques that Will Instantly Improve Your Photos – a very well written and informative article on the act of composition. Great examples are provided with each point discussed, giving the reader strong conclusions and ideas to try in their own work.
Marketing Campaigns for Photographers – Creating a Viral Video – a different perspective on how to market yourself is expressed in this interesting article. It includes some examples to show how to effectively utilize this technique of personal marketing.
Rare editions now sell for tens of thousands, but collectors on a limited budget can invest in emerging photographers byAdam Dewar at The Guardian
This is a very interesting article about owning and collecting photobooks. I do think books should be looked at rather than kept in plastic sleeves and never handled simply because they will increase to greater values if un-blemished but it is nice to know that treasured books will have some value in the future even if I never realise the profit.
“At first glance they may look like overpriced coffee-table books, but photobooks are highly collectible works of art. In recent years, a boom in the market has seen prices skyrocket. At a dedicated auction at Christie’s in London last year, signed early editions of influential photobooks such as Robert Frank‘s The Americans and Henri Cartier-Bresson‘s The Decisive Moment sold for £43,250 and £13,750 respectively.”.………..more
Variously described as the father of colur photography, William Eggleston is now recognised as having started his off beat imaging making in black and white. Eggleston in black-and-white? It seems a contradiction in terms. But here, finally, is the evidence that even the most famous colour photographer of all once saw the world around him in monochrome.As these rediscovered prints reveal, the man who made colour photography into an artform worked brilliantly in monochrome – and his eye for unsettling detail is every bit as sharp
If you don’t know his colour work have a look here for a taste
Oxford School of Photography 