William Eggleston
Encyclopedia
William Eggleston is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography
as a legitimate art
istic medium to display in art galleries—which, until the 1970s, often tended to privilege work by photographers making black-and-white prints.
and raised in Sumner, Mississippi
. His father was an engineer who had failed as a cotton farmer, 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. As a child, Eggleston was also interested in audio technology.
At the age of fifteen, Eggleston was sent to the Webb School
, a boarding establishment In Bell Buckle, Tennessee
. 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." Eggleston was unusual among his peers in eschewing the traditional Southern male pursuits of hunting and sports, in favor of artistic pursuits and observation of the world around him. Nevertheless, Eggleston noted in retrospect that he never felt like an outsider. "I never had the feeling that I didn't fit in," he told a reporter, "But probably I didn't."
Eggleston attended Vanderbilt University
for a year, Delta State College
for a semester, and the University of Mississippi
(Ole Miss) for approximately five years, none of these experiences resulting in a college degree. However, it was during these university years that his interest in photography took root: a friend at Vanderbilt gave Eggleston a Leica camera. Eggleston studied art at Ole Miss and was introduced to abstract expressionism
by a visiting painter from New York named Tom Young.
, and by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson
's book, The Decisive Moment. Eggleston later recalled that the book was "the first serious book I found, from many awful books...I didn't understand it a bit, and then it sank in, and I realized, my God, this is a great one.” First photographing in black-and-white, Eggleston began experimenting with color in 1965 and 1966; color transparency film became his dominant medium in the later sixties. Eggleston's development as a photographer seems to have taken place in relative isolation from other artists, although he was introduced to color photography by then Memphis College of Art professor William Christenberry
. In an interview, John Szarkowski
of New York's Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA) describes his first, 1969 encounter with the young Eggleston as being "absolutely out of the blue". 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, Eggleston's friend William 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."
Eggleston taught at Harvard in 1973 and 1974, and it was during these years that he discovered dye-transfer printing
; he was examining the price list of a photographic lab in Chicago when he read about the process. 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 colour saturation and the quality of the ink was 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." The dye-transfer process resulted in some of Eggleston's most striking and famous work, such as his 1973 photograph entitled 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."
At Harvard, Eggleston prepared his first portfolio, entitled 14 Pictures (1974), which consisted of fourteen dye-transfer prints. Eggleston's work was featured in an exhibition at MoMA in 1976, which was accompanied by the volume William Eggleston's Guide. The MoMA show is regarded as a watershed moment in the history of photography, by marking "the acceptance of colour photography by the highest validating institution" (in the words of Mark Holborn).
Around the time of his 1976 MoMA exhibition, Eggleston was introduced to Viva
, the Andy Warhol
"superstar", with whom he began a long relationship. 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. Also in the seventies, Eggleston experimented with video, producing several hours of roughly edited footage Eggleston calls Stranded in Canton. Writer Richard Woodward, who has viewed the footage, likens it to a "demented home movie", 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 suggests 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."
William Eggleston's Guide was followed by other books and portfolios, including Los Alamos (actually completed in 1974, before the publication of the Guide) the massive Election Eve (1976; a portfolio of photographs taken around Plains, Georgia
before that year's presidential election); The Morals of Vision (1978); Flowers (1978); Wedgwood Blue (1979); Seven (1979); Troubled Waters (1980); The Louisiana Project (1980); William Eggleston's Graceland (1984) The Democratic Forest (1989); Faulkner's Mississippi (1990), and Ancient and Modern (1992). 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). He is the subject of Michael Almereyda
's recent documentary portrait William Eggleston in the Real World
(2005). In 2008, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York co-organized with Haus der Kunst in Munich, the retrospective exhibition William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008
noted in her introduction to The Democratic Forest, an Eggleston photograph might include "old tyres, 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."
Eggleston has a unique ability to find beauty, and striking displays of color, in ordinary scenes. A dog trotting toward the camera; a Moose lodge; a woman standing by a rural road; a row of country mailboxes; a convenience store; the lobby of a Krystal fast-food restaurant—all of these ordinary scenes take on new significance in the rich colors of Eggleston's photographs. 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 ongoing 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!" 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." 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.”
It may help to compare Eggleston's work to the work of another illustrious Mississippian, William Faulkner
, who also drew subject matter from the Mississippi Delta
region that is the subject matter of much of Eggleston's art. Both Eggleston and Faulkner drew upon insights of the European and American avant-garde
s to help them explore their Southern environs in new and surprising ways. As the writer Willie Morris
wrote, Eggleston's "depiction of the rural Southern countryside speaks eloquently of the fictional world of Faulkner and, not coincidentally, the shared experience of almost every Southerner. Often lurid, always lyrical, his stark realism resonates with the language and tone of Faulkner's greatest mythic cosmos of Yoknapatawpha County
.... The work of William Eggleston would have pleased Bill Faulkner ... immensely." Eggleston seemed to acknowledge the affinity between himself and Faulkner with the publication of his book, Faulkner's Mississippi, in 1990.
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."
and who used the famous Red Ceiling image on their album Radio City
. Later records also had other Eggleston images, including the dolls on a Cadillac hood featured on the cover of the classic Alex Chilton
album Like Flies on Sherbert
. The Primal Scream
album Give out But Don't Give Up
features a cropped photograph of a neon confederate flag and a palm tree by Eggleston. In 1994, Eggleston allowed his long-time friend and fellow photographer Terry Manning
to use two Eggleston photographs for the front and back covers of the CD release of Christopher Idylls, an album of ethereal acoustic guitar music produced by Manning and performed by another Eggleston friend, Gimmer Nicholson.
In 2006, a William Eggleston image was coincidentally used as both the cover to Primal Scream
's single "Country Girl" and the paperback edition of Ali Smith
's novel The Accidental
. The same picture had already been used on the cover of Chuck Prophet
's Age of Miracles album in 2004.
In 2001, William Eggleston's photograph "Memphis (1968)" was used as the cover of Jimmy Eat World
's top-selling album Bleed American
. Eggleston's photos also appear on Tanglewood Numbers
by the Silver Jews
, Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band
by Joanna Newsom
and Transference
by Spoon
.
clothing; also in the photo is Charlotte Rampling
. They were photographed by Juergen Teller
. William Eggleston appears in the movie Great Balls of Fire
as Jerry Lee Lewis's
father.
Color photography
Color photography is photography that uses media capable of representing colors, which are traditionally produced chemically during the photographic processing phase...
as a legitimate art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
istic medium to display in art galleries—which, until the 1970s, often tended to privilege work by photographers making black-and-white prints.
Early years
William Eggleston was born in Memphis, TennesseeMemphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
and raised in Sumner, Mississippi
Sumner, Mississippi
Sumner is a town in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 407 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Sumner is located at ....
. His father was an engineer who had failed as a cotton farmer, 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. As a child, Eggleston was also interested in audio technology.
At the age of fifteen, Eggleston was sent to the Webb School
Webb School (Bell Buckle, Tennessee)
The Webb School is a private coeducational college preparatory boarding and day school in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, founded in 1870. It has been called the oldest, continuously operating boarding school in the South...
, a boarding establishment In Bell Buckle, Tennessee
Bell Buckle, Tennessee
Bell Buckle is a town in Bedford County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 500 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Bell Buckle is located at ....
. 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." Eggleston was unusual among his peers in eschewing the traditional Southern male pursuits of hunting and sports, in favor of artistic pursuits and observation of the world around him. Nevertheless, Eggleston noted in retrospect that he never felt like an outsider. "I never had the feeling that I didn't fit in," he told a reporter, "But probably I didn't."
Eggleston attended Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
for a year, Delta State College
Delta State University
Delta State University, also known as DSU, is a regional public university located in Cleveland, Mississippi, United States, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta...
for a semester, and the University of Mississippi
University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...
(Ole Miss) for approximately five years, none of these experiences resulting in a college degree. However, it was during these university years that his interest in photography took root: a friend at Vanderbilt gave Eggleston a Leica camera. Eggleston studied art at Ole Miss and was introduced to abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
by a visiting painter from New York named Tom Young.
Artistic development
Eggleston's early photographic efforts were inspired by the work of Swiss-born photographer Robert FrankRobert Frank
Robert Frank , born in Zürich, Switzerland, is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 photobook titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider's view of American...
, and by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
's book, The Decisive Moment. Eggleston later recalled that the book was "the first serious book I found, from many awful books...I didn't understand it a bit, and then it sank in, and I realized, my God, this is a great one.” First photographing in black-and-white, Eggleston began experimenting with color in 1965 and 1966; color transparency film became his dominant medium in the later sixties. Eggleston's development as a photographer seems to have taken place in relative isolation from other artists, although he was introduced to color photography by then Memphis College of Art professor William Christenberry
William Christenberry
William Christenberry is a photographer, painter, and sculptor who works with personal and somewhat mythical themes growing out of his childhood experiences in Hale County, Alabama....
. In an interview, John Szarkowski
John Szarkowski
John Szarkowski was a photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art.-Early life and career:...
of New York's Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
(MoMA) describes his first, 1969 encounter with the young Eggleston as being "absolutely out of the blue". 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, Eggleston's friend William Christenberry
William Christenberry
William Christenberry is a photographer, painter, and sculptor who works with personal and somewhat mythical themes growing out of his childhood experiences in Hale County, Alabama....
introduced him to Walter Hopps
Walter Hopps
Walter Hopps was an American museum director and curator of contemporary art. His obituary in the Washington Post described him as a "sort of a gonzo museum director -- elusive, unpredictable, outlandish in his range, jagged in his vision, heedless of rules."Hopps was born in Eagle Rock, Los...
, director of Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery. Hopps later reported being "stunned" by Eggleston's work: "I had never seen anything like it."
Eggleston taught at Harvard in 1973 and 1974, and it was during these years that he discovered dye-transfer printing
Dye-transfer process
-History:Technicolor introduced dye transfer in its Process 3, introduced in the feature film The Viking , which was produced by the Technicolor Corporation and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Techicolor's two previous systems were an additive color process and a poorly-received subtractive color...
; he was examining the price list of a photographic lab in Chicago when he read about the process. 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 colour saturation and the quality of the ink was 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." The dye-transfer process resulted in some of Eggleston's most striking and famous work, such as his 1973 photograph entitled 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."
At Harvard, Eggleston prepared his first portfolio, entitled 14 Pictures (1974), which consisted of fourteen dye-transfer prints. Eggleston's work was featured in an exhibition at MoMA in 1976, which was accompanied by the volume William Eggleston's Guide. The MoMA show is regarded as a watershed moment in the history of photography, by marking "the acceptance of colour photography by the highest validating institution" (in the words of Mark Holborn).
Around the time of his 1976 MoMA exhibition, Eggleston was introduced to Viva
Viva (Warhol superstar)
Viva is an American actress, writer and a former Warhol superstar.-Career:She was born Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann in Syracuse, New York. She was given the name Viva by Andy Warhol before the release of her first film but later used her married last name . She appeared in several of Warhol's films...
, the Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
"superstar", with whom he began a long relationship. 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. Also in the seventies, Eggleston experimented with video, producing several hours of roughly edited footage Eggleston calls Stranded in Canton. Writer Richard Woodward, who has viewed the footage, likens it to a "demented home movie", 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 suggests 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."
William Eggleston's Guide was followed by other books and portfolios, including Los Alamos (actually completed in 1974, before the publication of the Guide) the massive Election Eve (1976; a portfolio of photographs taken around Plains, Georgia
Plains, Georgia
Plains is a city in Sumter County, Georgia, United States. The population was 776 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Americus Micropolitan Statistical Area.-Notable people:...
before that year's presidential election); The Morals of Vision (1978); Flowers (1978); Wedgwood Blue (1979); Seven (1979); Troubled Waters (1980); The Louisiana Project (1980); William Eggleston's Graceland (1984) The Democratic Forest (1989); Faulkner's Mississippi (1990), and Ancient and Modern (1992). Eggleston also worked with filmmakers, photographing the set of John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
's film Annie (1982) and documenting the making of David Byrne
David Byrne (musician)
David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...
's film True Stories (1986). He is the subject of Michael Almereyda
Michael Almereyda
Michael Almereyda is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. His most well known work is Hamlet , starring Ethan Hawke.-Early life:...
's recent documentary portrait William Eggleston in the Real World
William Eggleston in the Real World
William Eggleston In The Real World is a documentary film about the photographer William Eggleston, made by Michael Almereyda, released in 2005....
(2005). In 2008, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York co-organized with Haus der Kunst in Munich, the retrospective exhibition William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008
Eggleston's aesthetic
Eggleston's mature work is characterized by its ordinary subject-matter. As Eudora WeltyEudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...
noted in her introduction to The Democratic Forest, an Eggleston photograph might include "old tyres, 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."
Eggleston has a unique ability to find beauty, and striking displays of color, in ordinary scenes. A dog trotting toward the camera; a Moose lodge; a woman standing by a rural road; a row of country mailboxes; a convenience store; the lobby of a Krystal fast-food restaurant—all of these ordinary scenes take on new significance in the rich colors of Eggleston's photographs. 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 ongoing 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!" 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." 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.”
It may help to compare Eggleston's work to the work of another illustrious Mississippian, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, who also drew subject matter from the Mississippi Delta
Mississippi Delta
The Mississippi Delta is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. The region has been called "The Most Southern Place on Earth" because of its unique racial, cultural, and economic history...
region that is the subject matter of much of Eggleston's art. Both Eggleston and Faulkner drew upon insights of the European and American avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
s to help them explore their Southern environs in new and surprising ways. As the writer Willie Morris
Willie Morris
William Weaks "Willie" Morris , was an American writer and editor born in Jackson, Mississippi, though his family later moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, which he immortalized in his works of prose. Morris' trademark was his lyrical prose style and reflections on the American South, particularly...
wrote, Eggleston's "depiction of the rural Southern countryside speaks eloquently of the fictional world of Faulkner and, not coincidentally, the shared experience of almost every Southerner. Often lurid, always lyrical, his stark realism resonates with the language and tone of Faulkner's greatest mythic cosmos of Yoknapatawpha County
Yoknapatawpha County
Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional county created by the American author William Faulkner, based upon and inspired by Lafayette County, Mississippi and its county seat of Oxford, Mississippi...
.... The work of William Eggleston would have pleased Bill Faulkner ... immensely." Eggleston seemed to acknowledge the affinity between himself and Faulkner with the publication of his book, Faulkner's Mississippi, in 1990.
According to Philip Gefter from Art & Auction
Art & Auction
Art+Auction is a monthly art magazine published in New York City by Louise Blouin Media. The magazine is published 12 times per year; it includes special features & art news stories, art & collector profiles, reviews & auction reports, calendar of art events, art market trends & insider market...
, "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."
Notable publications
The earliest commercial use of Eggleston's art was in the album covers for the Memphis group Big Star, with whom Eggleston recorded for the album Third/Sister LoversThird/Sister Lovers
Third, also issued as Sister Lovers, is the third rock album by American power pop group Big Star, recorded in 1974 and eventually released in 1978 by PVC Records...
and who used the famous Red Ceiling image on their album Radio City
Radio City (album)
On its release in January 1974, Radio City met with general acclaim. Record World judged the musicianship "superb"; Billboard described the album as "a highly commercial set", and Cashbox called it "a collection of excellent material". However, sales were thwarted by an inability to make the album...
. Later records also had other Eggleston images, including the dolls on a Cadillac hood featured on the cover of the classic Alex Chilton
Alex Chilton
William Alexander "Alex" Chilton was an American songwriter, guitarist, singer and producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star...
album Like Flies on Sherbert
Like Flies on Sherbert
With its deliberately below-par sound quality and performances, reviews of Like Flies on Sherbert differ as to whether the effect is positive or merely substandard...
. The Primal Scream
Primal Scream
Primal Scream are a Scottish alternative rock band originally formed in 1982 in Glasgow by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie and now based in London. The current lineup consists of Gillespie, Andrew Innes , Martin Duffy , and Darrin Mooney...
album Give out But Don't Give Up
Give Out but Don't Give Up
Give Out But Don't Give Up is a 1994 album by Primal Scream. It was the follow-up to the successful Screamadelica.-Track listing:All tracks written by Bobby Gillespie, Andrew Innes and Robert Young, unless noted.# "Jailbird" - 3:46# "Rocks" - 3:37...
features a cropped photograph of a neon confederate flag and a palm tree by Eggleston. In 1994, Eggleston allowed his long-time friend and fellow photographer Terry Manning
Terry Manning
Terry Manning is a music producer, songwriter, photographer and recording engineer known for work in rock, rhythm and blues, and pop music genres....
to use two Eggleston photographs for the front and back covers of the CD release of Christopher Idylls, an album of ethereal acoustic guitar music produced by Manning and performed by another Eggleston friend, Gimmer Nicholson.
In 2006, a William Eggleston image was coincidentally used as both the cover to Primal Scream
Primal Scream
Primal Scream are a Scottish alternative rock band originally formed in 1982 in Glasgow by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie and now based in London. The current lineup consists of Gillespie, Andrew Innes , Martin Duffy , and Darrin Mooney...
's single "Country Girl" and the paperback edition of Ali Smith
Ali Smith
Ali Smith is a British writer.She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that was never finished. She worked as a lecturer at University of...
's novel The Accidental
The Accidental
The Accidental is a 2005 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk. Amber's arrival has a profound impact on all the family members. Eventually she is cast out...
. The same picture had already been used on the cover of Chuck Prophet
Chuck Prophet
Chuck Prophet is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer. A Californian, Prophet first achieved notice in the American psychedelic/desert rock group Green on Red, with whom he toured and recorded in the 1980s...
's Age of Miracles album in 2004.
In 2001, William Eggleston's photograph "Memphis (1968)" was used as the cover of Jimmy Eat World
Jimmy Eat World
Jimmy Eat World is an American alternative rock band from Mesa, Arizona, that formed in 1993. The band is composed of lead vocalist and guitarist Jim Adkins, guitarist and backing vocalist Tom Linton, bassist Rick Burch and drummer Zach Lind....
's top-selling album Bleed American
Bleed American
-Personnel:Jimmy Eat World*Jim Adkins – vocals, guitar, percussion, bass guitar on "Your House", piano, organ on "My Sundown", bells, art direction*Rick Burch – bass guitar, vocals*Zach Lind – drums, percussion on "Your House" and "My Sundown"...
. Eggleston's photos also appear on Tanglewood Numbers
Tanglewood Numbers
Tanglewood Numbers is the fifth full-length album by Silver Jews, released in 2005.Like on all of their other albums, Silver Jews' principal song writer and constant band member is David Berman...
by the Silver Jews
Silver Jews
Silver Jews was an indie rock band from New York City, formed in 1989 by David Berman along with Pavement's Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich. Berman remained throughout and was the only constant member. During the last few albums, Cassie Berman became a regular member of the band...
, Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band
Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band
Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band is an EP by Joanna Newsom, first released on April 9, 2007 via Drag City.The EP was recorded and mixed over three days at The Plant Studios after Joanna had cancelled three consecutive shows due to a lost voice at the end of her seven-week-long U.S. tour...
by Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom is an American harpist, pianist and singer-songwriter from Nevada City, California.- Early life :Newsom grew up in the small town of Nevada City, California...
and Transference
Transference (album)
Transference is the seventh studio album by Austin, Texas indie rock band Spoon. It was released on January 18, 2010 in Europe, and on January 19 in North America...
by Spoon
Spoon (band)
Spoon is an American rock band formed in Austin, Texas. The band is composed of Britt Daniel ; Jim Eno ; Rob Pope and Eric Harvey .-History:...
.
Appearances
Eggleston is featured in a print ad for Marc JacobsMarc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for Marc Jacobs, as well as Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line, with more than 200 retail stores in 60 countries. He has been the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton since 1997...
clothing; also in the photo is Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling, OBE is an English actress. Her career spans four decades in English-language as well as French and Italian cinema.- Early life :...
. They were photographed by Juergen Teller
Juergen Teller
Juergen Teller is an artist and fashion photographer.-Life and career:Teller studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich, Germany...
. William Eggleston appears in the movie Great Balls of Fire
Great Balls of Fire! (film)
Great Balls of Fire! is a 1989 American biographical film directed by Jim McBride and starring Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis. Based on a biography by Myra Lewis and Murray M. Silver Jr., the screenplay is written by McBride and Jack Baran...
as Jerry Lee Lewis's
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...
father.
Sources
- Eggleston, William (1989). The Democratic Forest. Introduction by Eudora Welty. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-26651-0.
- Eggleston, William; & Morris, William (1990). Faulkner's Mississippi. Birmingham: Oxmoor House. ISBN 0-8487-1052-5.
- Eggleston, William (1992). Ancient and Modern. Introduction by Mark Holborn. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-41464-9.
- 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.
- Eggleston Trust bio
External links
- Cheim & Read - William Eggleston
- William Eggleston at the Whitney Museum.
- A biography of the artist William Eggleston from the J. Paul Getty Museum.
- The Eggleston Trust's website offers extensive information on the artist, including a gallery of his works.
- William Eggleston in the Real World - recent documentary on Eggleston
- By the ways, a journey with William Eggleston documentary selected for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2006
- William Eggleston at Xavier HufkensXavier HufkensXavier Hufkens is a European gallery owner and dealer in contemporary art. Since its founding in 1987, his gallery has been committed to the long term representation of established, mid-career and emerging artists. The gallery deals in a combination of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography,...
, Brussels