William Eggleston (American/Mississippi, b. 1939)

William Eggleston (American/Mississippi, b. 1939) , "Untitled (Interior)", 1983, chromogenic print, signed en verso, from Graceland portfolio, 10 in. x 8 in., matted. Note: William Eggleston was born in Memphis, raised in rural Mississippi and began studying photography in art school in the early 1960s. He attended Vanderbilt, Delta State College and the University of Mississippi without attaining a degree, eventually abandoning traditional academics to focus his studies on the works of Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. He began working in black and white photography, but he very quickly transitioned to experimenting with color, which was highly unusual for an artist at the time. Color photographs were considered primarily within the realm of advertising. Eggleston captured trivial objects and quotidian moments, allowing the color itself to be the main subject rather than the “who” or “what” that was being photographed. In 1976, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a solo show of Eggleston’s work that cemented him as one of the pioneers of fine art color photography and a master photographer. Even though MoMA had held two previous exhibitions showcasing color photography, Eggleston’s work almost single-handedly shifted the medium into the fine art sphere and influenced generations of photographers to follow. His fellow Mississippian and photographer, Eudora Welty, wrote of his works: “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 more full of implications than the mundane world.” Ref.: “William Eggleston.” The J. Paul Getty Museum. www.getty.edu. Accessed Jan. 2, 2020.