William Eggleston: His Circle & Beyond

Before the Museum of Modern Art’s 1976 landmark exhibition, “Color Photographs by William Eggleston”, black and white photography was the standard. The history of color photography dates back to the 19th Century, but could be said it was mostly used without thought, ignoring the dimension of color. Most photographers before Eggleston found color perplexing, not able to translate into the fine art category of the past.

William Eggleston is one of the most significant artists of the 20th Century to crash the 

Color barrier by using it to amplify, but not overwhelm, with vivid detail his seemingly ordinary, personal environment.

Eggleston is from the South (b. 1939, Memphis, Tennessee). His subjects are commonplace. He photographs friends and family, rural and suburban landscapes, home interiors and ordinary objects that are personal to him, like diary entries. The compositions are simple, austere and precise. The images may be seen as vernacular color photography, but his framing, content and intensity separates his work from the iconic snapshot with a certain purity and intellect.

This exhibition will feature other southern artists that are influenced by Eggleston, and also includes contemporaries of Eggleston. William Christenberry, strongly influenced by Walker Evans and the South, also mastered the complexity of color to illustrate his Southern birthplace. Birney Imes works with local subjects, some of his most important being the colorful juke joints in Mississippi.

Other Southern artists include William Greiner and Peter Brown, who have been working since the 1980’s. 

Contemporaries of Eggleston and more recent photographers outside of the South are also instrumental in their use of color: Stephen Shore, Bill Owens, Neal Slavin, Alec Soth, and David Graham.