William Eggleston: More Southern, More Weird
William Eggleston, a Memphis-born photographer who revolutionized color photography in the 1970s, is the subject of a new exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery titled All That Goes Unnoticed. Originally dismissed by critics for his saturated color images of rural Mississippi and American suburbs—which departed from the black-and-white aesthetic then considered ‘artistic’—Eggleston championed the Kodak dye printing process to capture everyday scenes with an uncanny, darkly cynical sensibility. Curator John Szarkowski’s 1976 MoMA championing of Eggleston’s work established him as a radical voice treating color as intrinsic to photography rather than a supplementary tool. The exhibition combines his celebrated colour works with lesser-known earlier monochromes, emphasizing Eggleston’s ‘democratic process’ of photographing the mundane and his ability to reveal weirdness embedded in American life, from gas stations to suburban tricycles transformed into unsettling symbols.
Original article published on AnOther — AI-generated summary. Visit the website to read the full article at the source. Image via AnOther.
