lizf's Full Review: William Eggleston and John Szarkowski - William Eg...
As pictures, these seem to me perfect. . .collectively a paradigm of a private view. . .described here with clarity, fullness and elegance. -- John Szarkowski
My husband is a fine art photographer. He's had shows in SOHO (at O.K. Harris) and at several other galleries in and around New York and New Jersey. His work has been sold to museums internationally. My husband and all other color photographers owe their careers to William Eggleston.
The Museum of Modern Art has a policy of open drop off. Once a week, artistic hopefuls can drop off their portfolio at MOMA and the curators will review the work. If you have talent -- you could get a show.
William Eggleston dropped off a grocery bag full of drug store prints he had taken. John Szarkowski, now retired, reviewed his prints and from that grocery bag came the first one-man show of color photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art. In fact, it was the first time color photography was taken seriously as an art form.
William Eggleston's Guide is the catalogue from that historic show. The Guide contains 48 images edited down from 375 photos shot between 1969 and 1971. The photographs are deceptively simple and yet extremely challenging. The cover photograph of a tricycle has become an icon of color photographic work.
Eggleston has a knack for taking pictures that look like someone's snapshot rejects. But then when you look at them... really look at them; you realize they are beautiful beyond words. They are at once simplistic and complicated; flat and sensual; gorgeous and harsh.
At one point, my husband studied photography with a woman who had studied with Ansel Adams. She worked in color, but her subject matter was very much in the Adams school of lush landscapes. She didn't "get" Eggleston. She described his photographs like this... It's like he framed a perfect picture and then just before he snapped the shutter; he looked away. Eggleston's photos do that. They divide people. Either you get it and you love his work or you just don't get it.
Eggleston’s work is what he knows. It’s the people, the landscapes, and the off-beat moments of life in and around his hometown of Memphis. His pictures include an anonymous woman in a loudly patterned dress wearing cat's eye glasses sitting on an equally loud outdoor sofa. There is the coal-fired barbecue shooting up flames. There are the curves of a gleaming black car fender and someone's torso. We see a tiny, gray-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only visible furniture is a shaded lamp on an end table. He captures moments in time, the pieces of life that are lost on most because we are to busy to notice.
I met Eggleston. I invited myself over to his house for dinner. Well, that not how it started. It started when I asked my husband what he wanted for Christmas. He said he wanted to take a seminar with Eggleston. I asked my husband how I would find out if he was teaching any seminars. My husband said, "Call him up." So I did.
I called him. I was shaking so hard it was difficult to push the buttons on my phone. But he answered very politely and indicated he wasn't teaching any seminars in the near future. So I asked... I asked if he ever reviewed the portfolio's of new photographers. He said sure. So then I asked if we could come over. He said sure. I said... how about Saturday? He said sure.
We had to race around like lunatics to get airline tickets and a hotel room. (Silly me, I thought you could drive from New Jersey to Memphis for a weekend.) But we did it. Saturday afternoon we stood at the doorstep of William Eggleston. My husband had his portfolio and I thought I was going to throw-up from anticipation.
We spent the afternoon, evening, and a good part of the morning sitting around looking at pictures, drinking, and talking about life and art. I even got to drive him to the drug store to pick up his latest set of prints.
Eggleston is very much like his pictures; regal, intelligent, very complicated, and a little off center. William Eggleston's Guide is a must see. It doesn't matter if you get it. Love it or hate it, the Guide is a piece of artistic history. It's a must own for any serious student of art.
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