A master of shifting perspective and capturing a disused gas station or empty street as well as a candid portrait, William Eggleston’s disarming photography captured America’s 20th century re-birth as a dizzy, capitalist state.
Eggleston’s Mississippi childhood was interrupted when he received French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s book, The Decisive Moment – the book became a source of lifelong inspiration, with the photographer brilliantly applying Bresson’s sense of empathy to modern America, to objects and landscapes as well as people.
Dr. Pepper machines, street signs, power lines and discarded coca-cola bottles – all everyday objects – would fall under Eggleston’s curiously angled lens as the photographer’s work adopted the pop art aesthetic of Andy Warhol with whom he socialised in 70s New York. He also experimented with video, producing the hours-long experimental piece Stranded in Canton that flitted from candid home-movie shots of his children to clips from drunken parties and a man biting a chicken’s head off in front of a crazed Maryland crowd. Throughout his work, Eggleston presents the everyday as a disorientating, complex and beautiful place.
No comments:
Post a Comment