William Eggleston

Born: July 27, 1939

Place: Memphis, Tennessee

Age: 82

BACKGROUND:

Eggleston, born in Memphis but raised in Summer, Tennessee, was raised by his parents, father an engineer and mother the daughter of the local judge. As a child, Eggleston was an introverted child who enjoyed solitary activities. He was also drawn to visual art from a young age, collecting postcards and magazine cutouts. However, to disengage him from the arts, his parents sent him to the Webb School at the age of 15. At this school, a boarding school, their mission was to “build character” and institute the “traditional Southern male pursuit” into their students. Later, Eggleston attended Vanderbilt University where one day, his friend gave him a camera, and his love for photography emerged.

PHOTOGRAPHY CAREER:

As a photographer, Eggleston was primarily influenced by Robert Frank, a Swiss-born photographer, and a book by the French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Due to the time-period, Eggleston first experimented photographing in black and white. But as technology advanced, he started to dabble in color in 1965-66. In the later 60’s, Eggleston started to become masterful in the use of color transparent film, which produces a positive image on a transparent background. Then in 1969, John Szarkowski, the director of photography at the New York Museum of Modern Art, contacted Eggleston “out of the blue”, quoting Eggleston. Szarkowski wanted to buy one of Eggleston’s photographs to display in the MoMA, which later got him in contact with many other directors of galleries and art museums who wanted to display his color photos. Then, from 1973-73, Eggleston taught photography at Harvard, when he discovered dye-transfer, which allowed him to print his pictures in color rather than developing them on transparent film. This allowed Eggleston to bring more color into his photographs. He used 14 of these photos to make his first portfolio entitled 14 Pictures. These photographs were displayed at Harvard. Along with creating many portfolios, such as Los Alamos and Elections Eve, Eggleston also wrote some books, such as William Eggleston’s Guide. Eggleston’s aesthetic for the majority of his photos were primarily ordinary subject matters such as cars, traffic cones, and most iconic, a tricycle. Eggleston used everyday objects to capture their simplicity, but also their complexity in terms of color.

Citation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eggleston