He risked and managed to overthrow one of the biggest prejudices about artistic photography: that it could only be done in black and white. In the 1970s, color was still synonymous with commercial and vulgar, even though the first color film had gone on sale in 1935. However, there were those who investigated the many possibilities beyond black and white. One of them was the American photographer William Eggleston (Memphis, 1939), who recognized the unmistakable power of color and its pictorial value.
The KBr photography center of Fundación MAPFRE in Barcelona hosts the William Eggleston exhibition. The mystery of the everyday, one of the largest exhibitions that have been presented to date in Spain about the author, considered a living legend of photography. The retrospective covers much of his career, from his first black and white images to those he developed in color starting in 1965, and includes his last work, The Outlands. Among the chosen images, the first color photo that Eggleston took stands out: a supermarket clerk pushing some carts.
Heir to a family dedicated to cotton cultivation, he grew up in the southern United States, where in the 1960s the scars of a slave past and intense racist conflicts persisted, while the emerging middle class was transformed by the new consumer society. Along with Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, among others, Eggleston is part of a generation of authors who during the seventies freed photography from many of the restrictive rules and concepts of the medium. His images, seemingly simple, are always attractive.
During his university years, Eggleston discovered the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans, which made him see photography more freely. Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” made him understand that complex movements and scenes could be condensed into a single image based on everyday motifs. In Evans’ work, he was interested in simple, balanced and elegant frontal themes and frames. At that time, the author also learned about the painting of the abstract expressionists, which offered pictorial qualities to his photographs.
Between 1973 and 1974, while the artist was teaching classes at Harvard University, he discovered the dye transfer system, which allowed him to achieve levels of color saturation that were previously unattainable. He had opened the door to a transformation that had no turning back. In 1976 John Szarkowski, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, organized a solo exhibition of works by Eggleston, making him the first photographer to display color images on the walls of a museum.
The MoMa show was especially controversial. Some critics reacted bitterly and reviled the photographs for their banality. Others, however, highlighted that the use of color provided nuances and sensations that black and white photography had yet to evoke. William Eggleston. The mystery of the everyday includes part of those color slides that the artist made between 1969 and 1974 and that the curator of the New York museum used as material for his William Eggleston’s Guide of 1976.
Eggleston immersed himself in a strange and familiar universe while exploring the daily life of small southern towns. He photographed everything that came before his eyes with a clear artistic intention: grocery stores, bars, office desks, supermarkets, gas stations, portraits of his family and friends… But it didn’t take him long to capture that world of consumption marked by the popularity of automobiles and malls, shopping centers located in the suburbs where everything was found in a single space.
Restlessness, serenity, mystery, fascination, timelessness, detachment… There are many terms used by experts and admirers of Eggleston’s work. “The psychological dimension of the consciously applied colors of the dye transfer prints recalled the control of color in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and the ambiguity of what was stated in the images showed a certain kinship with the films of the American director David Lynch ”, explains the prominent German specialist Thomas Weski in the exhibition catalogue.
The Memphis artist has an extraordinary ability to fill images with meaning, even when the camera seems to capture an empty scene or where only objects such as old shoes, a freezer with food or a road sign are visible. Far from what is apparent, his work has become the exciting recognition of life itself. “I didn’t imagine being able to make something better than a perfect copy of Cartier-Bresson. And finally I got it,” the author confessed. Eggleston, who received the PHotoEspaña Baume et Mercier award in 2004, has become one of the most influential authors in contemporary photography.
