2015-16 Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient The Eggleston Effect: Color Photography as Fine Art Kavya Ramakrishnan, Class of 2016
THE EGGLESTON EFFECT: COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY AS FINE ART
Kavya Ramakrishnan 2016 Mitra Family Scholar Mentors: Ms. Roxana Pianko, Mr. Joshua Martinez, Mrs. Meredith Cranston April 6, 2016
Ramakrishnan 2 "Black and white are the colors of photography," iconic photographer Robert Frank boldly stated in 1961.1 Walker Evans declared in 1959 that "There are four simple words for the matter, which must be whispered: Color photography is vulgar."2 Though color photography had been made available to artists and the public as early on as 1907, it failed to gain popularity as a legitimate artistic medium beyond the initial interest shown upon its discovery.3 While black and white continued to be considered the colors of fine art photography, audiences and critics came to associate color photography with fashion, advertising, and amateur snapshots that belonged in family albums, not gallery walls.4 Artist William Eggleston’s solo 1976 Museum of Modern Art exhibition of color photographs, curated by Director of Photography John Szarkowski, shocked the masses and created a shift in thought around the function and propriety of color photography in the realm of fine art.5 Though the initial critical reception of the exhibit was overwhelmingly negative, it has come to be regarded as a watershed moment in the history of photography. 6 While Eggleston had only begun to experiment with color negative film in 1965 six years after Helen Levitt received her first Guggenheim fellowship to explore color photography, twenty-five years after Paul Outerbridge published Photographing in Color, and after many MoMA exhibitions featuring color photographs his exhibition and work is pointed to, more often than any of his peers’, as the genesis of the acceptance and standardized use of color photography in a fine art setting.7 Although both Eggleston’s imagery and inventive use of color were crucial factors in the acceptance of his work, the most instrumental aspect allowing Eggleston’s work to rise above that of his peers in terms of popularity was his close relationship with and public support from the curator John Szarkowski, who played a crucial role in creating the framework and vocabulary for the public acceptance of Eggleston’s signature style and in doing so formed a
Ramakrishnan 3 new way of viewing and using photography, as demonstrated in Eggleston’s landmark 1976 exhibition. Color Photography: Conception to the 1970s The conception of the Autochrome process, the first feasible and commercially successful color process, by the Lumière Brothers in 1907, stirred significant interest in the process’ possibilities in established artists such as Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz.8 Magazines like National Geographic started dispatching photographers to shoot with autochrome and documentary fieldwork became more feasible with this relatively portable medium.9 For about 30 years, it was the most widely used process for capturing color.10 While this level of interest remained consistent over time in commercial industries, it gradually lost the interest of artists who soon discovered its many technical shortcomings.11 In the broader cultural realm, since the early 1940s, color photography had become commonplace in commercial industries like fashion, film, and advertising.12 This exposure of color to the general public was part of the democratization of photography, the process of taking photography from the hands of a select few and putting into the hands of the public. Beginning in the early 1930s, high-end magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue hired premier photographers like Anton Bruehl and Edward Steichen to meet the high demand for color in their products, packaging, and advertisements.13 The growing prevalence of color televisions in American homes by the 1960s reinforced the place of color in the vernacular visual landscape.14 Families and amateur photographers also increasingly turned to color snapshots to document their daily lives; a favorite film was Kodak’s Kodachrome, while instant Polaroid film came on the market in 1972.15 Polaroid produced its first consumer camera, the Land Camera Model 95, in 1947, the first camera to use instant film to quickly produce photographs without developing them in a
Ramakrishnan 4 laboratory.16 However, it was the 1972 Polaroid SX-70, the first model to eject photographs automatically and develop them quickly without chemical residue, that was most instrumental in advancing the democratization of photography among the public.17 Countering this cultural acceptance, however, were attitudes among those who were more reticent to embrace photography in a fine art context. Opinions about color photography in the early 1970s exemplified what artist and author David Batchelor has termed chromophobia – the tendency to “devalue color, diminish its significance, [and] deny its complexity.”18 That color was still rare in fine art photography at this time can be traced to a number of factors. On one hand, the tenets of photographic modernism had been elucidated in relation to black and white photography, beginning with the voices of photographers like Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz in the first two decades of the twentieth century, and continuing with mid century figures such as Edward Weston.19 Their monochrome-driven criteria and declarations of the medium’s inherent capabilities, qualities, and limitations influenced subsequent illuminations of photographic modernism in critical histories of the medium by curators such as Beaumont Newhall, providing no guidance for how photographers should think in color.20 Serious photographers applied its rules to black-and-white photography, not least because they wished to differentiate themselves from the increasing use of color photography, both in related fields, such as journalism or advertising, and in the private sphere of the amateur photographer.21 From a more technical standpoint, making color prints also remained difficult and unpredictable until color films with faster speeds and more reliable hues were released in the 1960s.22 Art critic Max Kozloff observes that in earlier, more saturated versions of Kodachrome, which came onto the market in 1935, a bright red bathing suit would appear as if it was “wearing the woman instead of the other way around.”23 (See Fig. 1).
Ramakrishnan 5
Figure 1. Muray, Nickolas. Woman in cell, playing solitaire. 1950. These circumstances fed the long-held prejudices of monochrome photographers like Ansel Adams, who considered his own color photography “aesthetically inconsequential but technically remarkable.”24 Walker Evans, likewise, complained that it provided an overabundance of visual information.25 Comparing color to the cacophony of city streets, he reflected: “Color photographers confuse color with noise; they ‘[blow] you down with screeching hues alone… a bebop of electric blues, furious reds and poison greens.’”26 Though not a photographer, in his 1980 book Camera Lucida, the French philosopher Roland Barthes also characterized color as “a coating applied later on to the original truth of the black and white photograph.”27 He believed color to be “an artifice, a cosmetic.”28 Barthes associated color in photography with surface, and therefore as secondary to form. Meanwhile, voicing the prevalent belief that color in photography was inappropriate for certain subjects, at the time of the Vietnam War, American photojournalist David Douglas Duncan stated: “I’ve never made a combat picture in color – ever. And I never will. It violates too many of the human decencies and the great privacy of the battlefield.”29 (see fig. 2)
Ramakrishnan 6
Figure 2. Duncan, David Douglas. Korea. 1950. Underneath this moralizing statement is the loaded question of how Duncan and other photographers came to associate black and white photography with truthfulness and respect. Possibly, their prejudices stemmed from a combination of generic conventions of war photography established during World War II, and the distancing, abstracting quality of the black and white photograph, whose lack of color directs attention to form and grants a sense of dignity to its subjects. Museum of Modern Art Curatorial Practices and Changes: 1940s to 1970s Although it was widely repeated that Eggleston’s exhibition was the first of color photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), color had in fact been appearing at that institution since the 1940s.30 Edward Steichen, the museum’s director of photography from 1948 to 1962, took a populist approach to the introduction of color, organizing large-scale exhibitions of press photography and other forms of commercial work alongside art photography.31 For example, the 1950 exhibition All Color Photography, a massive show of 342 photographs by 75 photographers, included examples from industrial, governmental, journalistic, and amateur photography alongside a few works of art photographers.32 Though Steichen’s intentions were
Ramakrishnan 7 progressive, critics and the public perceived color as commercial and amateur after viewing this conglomeration of images.33 Taking a more cautious approach to his handling of color, Szarkowski was instrumental in setting up another early exhibition of color photographs in 1962, featuring work by Ernst Haas.34 While Haas’ and his peers’ work was deemed “handsome and even inventive” and to have rightly treated color not as though it “were a separate issue, a problem to be solved in isolation” by Szarkowski, it did not achieve the same level of mastery as Eggleston’s later accomplishments because it was “dedicated to a basically familiar idea of beauty, one very indebted to painterly traditions.”35 To Szarkowski, Eggleston was the first color photographer to shed the pictorial photography movement’s painterly facade and to reveal the medium’s natural strength at rendering form and tonal variation in the world. MoMA’s next attempt at mastering the addition of color to photography came in 1966 in the form of an exhibition of still lifes by Marie Cosindas.36 According to a MoMA press release, the exhibition was the museum’s first to be devoted entirely to prints made by the Polaroid Land Process.37 The prints were described as having “exotic color and startling detail.”38 To Szarkowski, the images possessed an “otherworldliness” that referred to a “place and time not quite identifiable -- a place with the morning-fresh textures and the opalescent light of a private Arcady, and to a time suspended, as in a child’s long holiday.”39 Many years later in the introductory essay to William Eggleston’s Guide, Szarkowski alluded to Cosindas’ work, along with Irving Penn’s, as some of the few “conspicuous successes of color photography.”40 But both Cosindas and Penn had failed to amend the problem of color with the tradition of “straight” photography, only amounting to “masterly studio constructions, designed to suit the preferences of the camera” and needing a “high degree of prior control over the material photographed.”41
Ramakrishnan 8 In spite of the fact that Haas, Cosindas, Eliot Porter, and Helen Levitt had all held exhibitions at MoMA prior to 1976, there was little cultural and critical response to their inclusions of color images in sharp contrast to the conspicuous wave of disparaging criticism that welcomed Eggleston’s 1976 exhibition.42 Setting the stage for the exhibition’s reception and partially responsible for the delay of the acceptance of color was the widespread exploration at the same time of new photographic behaviors, involving new types of subject matter and photographic expression.43 During this period of change, curators, especially at MoMA, pushed the envelope, playing an active role in shaping the future of the vocabulary that critics and the public would use to describe photography.44 Most viewers and critics, at the time still lacking this vocabulary to properly speak to the works, called many of the images displayed during this period banal, artificial, kitschy, and commercial.45 Color, also being explored by many of these same photographers, also came to be associated with those qualities.46 The 1967 MoMA exhibition New Documents was one such pioneering exploration of the function of photography, specifically documentary photography.47 Featuring the work of Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Lee Friedlander, all of whom were not well-known at the time but came to be considered iconic photographers, the exhibition was initially considered radical and out of step with the times.48 Curator John Szarkowski wrote in the introduction to the exhibition that, “In the past decade this new generation of photographers has redirected the technique and aesthetic of documentary photography to more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life but to know it, not to persuade but to understand.”49 New Documents heralded a burgeoning age in photography that emphasized “the conflicts of modern life presented without editorializing or sentimentalizing but with a critical, observant eye.”50
Ramakrishnan 9 William Eggleston Widely considered one of the most influential photographers of the last half-century, Tennessee-born and Mississippi-raised artist William Eggleston has played a pivotal role in defining the history of color photography.51 Though his grandfather had been responsible for first introducing him to photography as a young boy, Eggleston quickly lost interest.52 It was in college that his interest in photography was reawakened after discovering French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s monograph, The Decisive Moment.53 Eggleston internalized CartierBresson’s concept of the “decisive moment,” seeking to reduce what was happening in front of the camera to an essential, carefully composed moment to be captured.54 John Szarkowski once said of Eggleston: "The decisive moment was a decisive influence on him."55 Eggleston endeavored to make a photograph not only by the subject matter but rather by capturing the balance of elements residing in life.56 For Cartier-Bresson, this balance was captured in a flash of a moment; for Eggleston, they are poised in the mundane.57 Having spent most of his life in the American South, it was there that Eggleston developed his signature affectless, passive, and seemingly apathetic style.58 After once remarking to a friend that he did not “particularly like what's around me,” Eggleston then decided to confront, and photograph, his immediate surroundings, which included everything from ceilings to tricycles to cars, and use them as sources for his subjects and images, and, in the process, developed his signature “democratic” approach to photographing the world around him.59 Eggleston, speaking on the development of his democratic approach and finding “foreign” landscapes in familiar areas, has commented that “I had to face the fact that what I had to do was go out in foreign landscapes. What was new back then was shopping centers, and I took pictures of them.”60 At the time, this way of seeing was inventive, following the photographic vision
Ramakrishnan 10 espoused by Szarkowski through previous exhibitions such as New Documents and other groundbreaking exhibitions of the time like New Topographics. Breaking from previous strict and dogmatic conventions, which emphasized strictness of composition, masterliness of execution, and significance of form, this new way of seeing was countered by contemporary photographers who broke from traditional standards with their lack of traditional composition and apparent “snapshot” quality of their images, no longer using photography as a documentary medium in the archetypal sense, but instead as a means of giving expression to their own personal, sometimes unconventional view of the world.61 1976 MoMA Exhibition On May 24, 1976, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened Photographs by William Eggleston, an exhibition curated by John Szarkowski containing seventy-five photographs in Eggleston’s signature democratic style.62 (see fig. 3) Though he had received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 1974 and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship just the previous year, Eggleston remained relatively unknown at the time of his 1976 exhibition.63
Figure 3. Eggleston, William. Memphis. 1971-1973.
Ramakrishnan 11 The seventy-five photographs were selected for the exhibition from an essay of 375 color photographs taken by Eggleston in his own private milieu in and around Memphis between the years of 1969 and 1971.64 (see fig. 4)
Figure 4. Keller, Katherine. Installation view of the exhibition, "William Eggleston." 1976. Eggleston's exhibition was the first presentation of a color photographer's work at the Museum of Modern Art after an interval of more than ten years.65 The presentation of the exhibition was nominal and sparse -- the walls were white and the frames minimal; pictures hung in straight rows, sometimes paired or grouped according to size, orientation, and subject matter.66 The accompanying monograph, William Eggleston’s Guide, was MoMA’s first publication dedicated to color photography.67 The Guide, which was comprised of just forty-nine photographs, differed from the original exhibition; many images in the monograph were not from the show and vice versa.68 (see fig. 5)
Ramakrishnan 12
Figure 5. Eggleston, William. Memphis. 1969-1970. Eggleston’s images revealed his snapshot-inflected engagement with contemporary life. The subjects of his photographs were his friends, relatives, and humdrum roadside details around the South.69 The works suggested the impassive, yet invasive, familiarity of a stranger’s family photo album. The photographs range from unsettlingly personal portraits, as in one showing a middle-aged man alone on a hotel bed, (see fig. 6) to austere depictions of bicycles on sidewalks (see fig. 7).
Figure 6. Eggleston, William. Huntsville, Alabama. 1970.
Ramakrishnan 13
Figure 7. Eggleston, William. Untitled (Bicycle on Sidewalk). 1970-1974. The reception to the exhibition was greater than Szarkowski or Eggleston could have imagined, widely hailed as one of the worst shows of the year by critics; the feedback for the show was mixed and leaning toward the negative.70 The saturated color photographs of cars, signs, buildings in decay, and individuals on display ran counter to the still prevalent black-andwhite orthodoxy of fine art photography at the time. Shocking viewers with its depictions of somber, muted, commonplace imagery, as well as its use of color, the show was attacked for its ordinary subject matter and what critics viewed as a passive, seemingly meaningless tone.71 New York Times critic Gene Thornton, concurring with many of his fellow critics, concluded in December, 1976, that Eggleston's was the "most hated show of the year," and that the photographs strongly resembled "the color slides made by the man next door," further revealing the pervasive subconscious attachment of color with the amateur.72 Now hailed as a watershed moment in photography, in 1976 Eggleston’s democratic style of photographing was still perceived by many as careless, boring, and of little visual interest.73 This shift in photographic aesthetics was part of the movement begun by earlier photographers in exhibitions like New
Ramakrishnan 14 Topographics and New Documents who sought to make honest and simple photographs freed of over-aestheticization. Inventive Use of Color Though the fact that Szarkowski was known to call Eggleston “the inventor of color photography” was much to the chagrin of critics, his comment makes sense if one considers his statement in a nonliteral sense – though Eggleston was clearly not the first to use the process, he was one of the first photographers to have overcome the flaws inherent in earlier color photographs, which Szarkowski described in the introduction to Eggleston’s Guide: “Most color photography, in short, has been either formless or pretty. In the first case the meanings of color have been ignored; in the second they have been considered at the expense of allusive meanings. While editing directly from life, photographers have found it too difficult to see simultaneously both the blue and the sky.”74 These flaws have resulted in previous failures that can be divided into two categories: “blackand-white photographs made with color film” in which color is not formally attended to and photographs “of beautiful colors in pleasing relationships,” where subject matter is chosen solely nominally and color is made to imitate painterly conventions.75 Eggleston's use of color, unlike glaring previous attempts by other photographers, is unspectacular. His subtle application renders the viewer no longer aware of it as a separate component of the process by which we visually perceive his photographs, form and color harmoniously live together.76 His use of color in photographs of nonevents is especially meaningful for their ability to convey the feeling of a particular place.77 He emphasizes hues that “soak the scene or resonate in a critical way,” adding depth through perceived sound, silence, smell, temperature, sensations that black-and-white photography has arguably yet to capture.78
Ramakrishnan 15 Increasing the preciousness of Eggleston’s photographs as artistic objects and differentiating them from amateur "snapshots" was his utilization of the dye imbibition printing process (often called the dye-transfer printing process after the Kodak product carrying the same name).79 Though he was not the first artist to begin utilizing the process (materials for dye imbibition made their commercial debut in 1945), it is still very much associated with Eggleston, who was insistent upon using the process.80 In the process, three separate sheets of negative film are produced from a full-color transparency through red, green, and blue filters.81 From these negatives, enlarged gelatin matrices are produced and immersed in cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes.82 All three matrices are then rolled out under pressure in exact register on a single sheet of paper, and the combination of transferred dye images creates a final full-color print.83 Using this process, he was able to achieve an unparalleled sense of color saturation and an unusual intensity that gave the color a sense of importance in the image.84 The commercial implications were enormous since the process offered stability; concerns about color prints fading vanished and museums could now make acquisitions without worry.85 Originally used for magazine and advertising purposes, the dyes used in the process are very spectrally pure compared to normal photographic dyes, and the process possesses a larger color spectrum and tonal scale than any other process, including inkjet.86 Another defining property of dye transfer is that it allows the practitioner the highest degree of control compared to any other photochemical color print process, due to each color being independently transferred to the final paper.87 Using this process thus enabled Eggleston to control each individual color in his bold photographs and differentiate his work from that of previous color photographers. Speaking about a now-iconic untitled photograph referred to as the The Red Ceiling, Eggleston stated “It is so powerful that, in fact, I've never seen it reproduced on the page to my satisfaction. When you look at a dye-
Ramakrishnan 16 transfer print it's like it's red blood that is wet on the wall. The photograph is still powerful. It shocks you every time.”88 (see fig. 8)
Figure 8. Eggleston, William. Untitled (The Red Room). 1973. Along with the employment of the dye-transfer process, Eggleston’s use of a Leica also distanced his work from being perceived as simple amateur snapshots despite their superficial similarities, indicated contemptuously by critics.89 Unlike a family photo album whose pictures would be made with a Kodak lnstamatic or Polaroid, Eggleston’s images were created using a Leica, a high-art camera used by highly regarded art photographers including Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.90 John Szarkowski: Curatorial Practices Assuming the position of Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962, John Szarkowski held, arguably, the single most influential voice in the world of photography.91 As the first contemporary American art museum to have a department specifically for photography, MoMA’s leadership in the field remained virtually unchallenged, the position of director of the department was “unquestionably the single most influential sponsorial position in contemporary creative photography.”92 Almost single-handedly responsible for the elevation of photography’s status during the latter half of the 20th century, Szarkowski helped to change the
Ramakrishnan 17 course of photography through creating historic exhibitions such as New Documents and being the first to confer importance and publicity on the work of now-established and iconic photographers such as Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand.93 Unafraid to break with tradition, Szarkowski, always ahead of his time, helped usher in a new direction in photography: casual, snapshot-like photographs with subject matter so apparently ordinary that it was hard to categorize.94 Szarkowski's curatorial concept, “I think I took the risk of allowing photography to be itself,” embraced both ends of the medium.95 Along with retrospectives and reshowings of classic photographers, he also exhibited photographers who had previously been known only to experts.96 Unlike Steichen, who “would exhibit photographers within group shows using a rubric that tended to emphasize a certain kind of encompassing philosophical or quasi-political idea,” Szarkowski’s exhibitions focused more deeply on the works and ideas of a few photographers instead of fitting many within a box.97 In 1967, for example, Szarkowski exhibited Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Lee Friedlander in New Documents and, later, in solo exhibitions, representing the very opposite of what constituted MoMA predecessor Edward Steichen's exhibition policy.98 Szarkowski's ambitious program for establishing photography as a respected art in its own right as director of photography has not been set forth explicitly in a single work, but has resulted through the compilation of a series of limited essays over his career.99 His curatorial project has followed a few significant goals, including “the introduction of a formalist vocabulary theoretically capable of comprehending the visual structure (the “carpentry”) of any existing photograph” and “the routing of photography's "main tradition" away from the (exhausted) Stieglitz/Weston line of high modernism and toward sources formerly seen as peripheral to art photography.”100 Though he did not view his position of curator as
Ramakrishnan 18 “photography's champion and protector and advocate” as his predecessors did, Szarkowski thought that the “opportunity and the function of a curator is to make a judgement as to that work which seems to have in it the greatest vitality and therefore the greatest potential for affecting how other subsequent artists will view the potentials of their shared form. To the degree that one does that successfully, one has a kind of indirect hand in history.”101 Thus, his lofty position in his field and the respect he commanded helped move photography in the vein he desired and assure the positive reception of exhibitions, artists, and new trends in photography that he was responsible for introducing. Influence on Eggleston and 1976 Exhibition As a curator, Szarkowski strived “to suggest new possibilities, new openings, potential new positions to occupy which are interesting and which in turn promise to open up new vistas and succeeding new possibilities.”102 After being shown both Eggleston’s color and previous black and white work during their initial meeting in New York, Szarkowski proposed a show.103 “He was so enthusiastic about the color because he said nobody’s using it seriously,” Eggleston said of that first meeting.104 “Probably this one man convinced me I should be doing color.”105 The influence Szarkowski exerted on Eggleston as an unofficial mentor and the trust between the two can be seen in the fact that Eggleston allowed Szarkowski to be heavily involved in the bulk of the editing for his 1976 solo exhibition.106 Together, they sorted through hundreds of slides and choose seventy-five for printing for the show.107 The importance of this gesture cannot be overstated in its impact on the exhibition; the sorting and editing process played a vital role in the interplay and meaning between the images. Szarkowski’s sorting, ordering, and presentation of Eggleston’s photographs significantly transformed the public’s understanding of the images. Interesting to consider is how Eggleston’s images could have been interpreted in a different
Ramakrishnan 19 sequencing; would the show still have been as much of a failure as it was considered at the time or as influential as it now is? In addition, though he first saw and wanted to exhibit Eggleston’s work in 1967, he patiently waited nine years until 1976 to set up the exhibition.108 Though this was partially due to searching for financial support for the exhibition, Szarkowski’s intentions may have also waited for a more receptive audience, one who would have had more exposure to color and would be potentially closer to accepting and understanding his work. Recounting the process of setting up the exhibition years later, he related: We sat on that work for years trying to find support and finally found enough money to go forward with it, and it was still too soon, as far as the public response was concerned. It was a total, total mystery. Including opinion shared by a lot of people who I think are good photographers, who regarded it as kind of meaningless — meaningless, random snapshots — who now regard him as brilliant, great, a master pioneer of color photography. There isn't any doubt in my mind very much that what is the best of color photography done since then owes an enormous debt to his discoveries. But if everything you do is immediately met with public approval, you must be too late. That would tend to suggest that everybody already knew that that was good.109 Ultimately, the photographs of William Eggleston, though sometimes credited with nearly single-handedly introducing and standardizing color in art photography, would not be as prominent in the annals of art history as they are today without the support of curator John Szarkowski. In addition, through his ability to view color not as an additive to a photograph, but as an essential component to its form, Eggleston was able to overcome the flaws inherent in previous examples of color photography.110 Eggleston’s employment of the dye-transfer printing
Ramakrishnan 20 process allowed him complete technical control over the appearance of color in his images and further distanced his photographs from those of novice photographers.111 Eggleston’s photographs also appeared at a more fortuitous time than previous experimenters’ work. By 1976, the public’s exposure to color in the popular media reinforced its place in the vernacular visual landscape. However, this vernacular exposure was a double-edged sword, as critics and previous photographers who had forged their legacies in black and white resisted color, viewing its place as in the sphere of advertising, fashion, and journalism.112 Curators during this time period, especially at MoMA, worked to overcome these associations, create a new visual vocabulary concerning photography, and encouraged new work that often pushed the envelope of what the public was ready to accept.113 Though all of the previous factors were prominent in his success and the acceptance of his work, the importance of his close relationship with Szarkowski cannot be overstated. John Szarkowski, who played a crucial role in creating the framework and vocabulary for the public acceptance of Eggleston’s signature style, simultaneously formed a new way of viewing and using photography. With an influence so widespread that entire generations of younger photographers have used Eggleston’s work as a point of reference, consciously or subconsciously, Eggleston and Szarkowski have succeeded in defining the vocabulary that we use to describe the world and reinventing the dialect of color in the language of photography of the twentieth century and beyond.
Ramakrishnan 21 Notes 1
Katherine A. Bussard and Lisa Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman (New York: Aperture, 2013), 7. 2 Ibid. 3 Kevin D. Moore, James Crump, and Leo Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America 19701980 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 24. 4 Ibid., 9. 5 Bussard and Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color, 172. 6 Ibid., 160. 7 Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 26. 8 John Rohrbach, Sylvie Penichon, and Andrew Walker, Color: American Photography Transformed (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 7. 9 Ibid., 8. 10 Ibid., 10. 11 Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 19. 12 Rohrbach, Penichon, and Walker, Color: American Photography Transformed, 26-32. 13 Ibid., 28. 14 Ibid., 9. 15 Bussard and Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color, 12. 16 Katherine A. Bussard and Lisa Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman (New York: Aperture, 2013), 20. 17 Ibid. 18 David Batchelor, Chromophobia (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 23. 19 Paul Strand, "Photography," Camera Work, June 1917, 3-4, digital file; Edward Weston, "Seeing Photographically," The Complete Photographer 9, no. 49 (1943): 3200-3206, digital file. 20 Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present, completely rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982). 21 Weski, "The Tender-Cruel Camera," Eggleston Trust. 22 Bussard and Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color, 1-15. 23 Max Kozloff, "“Photography: The Coming to Age of Color," Artforum, January 1975, 31. 24 Eauclaire, The New Color Photography, 43. 25 Ibid., 48. 26 Ibid. 27 Roland Barthes and Geoff Dyer, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, pbk. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 81. 28 Ibid. 29 David Douglas Duncan quoted in Kozloff, "Photography: The Coming to Age of Color," 34. 30 Bussard and Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color, 68. 31 Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 17. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Anna Kerrer Kivlan, "William 'Eggleston: Who’s Afraid of Magenta, Yellow and Cyan?,'" American Suburb X, last modified July 1, 2015, accessed October 20, 2015, http://www.americansuburbx.com/2015/07/william-eggleston-whos-afraid-of-magenta-yellow-andcyan.html. 35 Ibid. 36 "Marie Cosindas: Polaroid Color Photographs," news release, 1, PDF. 37 Ibid.
Ramakrishnan 22
38
Ibid. Ibid. 40 William Eggleston and John Szarkowski, William Eggleston's Guide, 2nd ed. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 9. 41 Ibid. 42 Kivlan, "William 'Eggleston: Who’s Afraid," American Suburb X. 43 Bussard and Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color, 11. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 "New Documents: February 28 - May 7, 1967," news release, [Page #], accessed April 9, 2016, https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/3860/releases/MOMA_1967_JanJune_0034_21.pdf?2010. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 "Arbus, Diane.," Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, accessed April 8, 2016, http://cw.routledge.com/ref/20cphoto/arbus.html. 51 Sally Eauclaire, The New Color Photography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1981), 23. 52 Ibid. 53 Thomas Weski, "The Tender-Cruel Camera," Eggleston Trust, accessed April 8, 2016, http://www.egglestontrust.com/hasselblad_weski.html. 54 Ibid. 55 "William Eggleston: The No Muss, No Fuss Master of Color Photography," Artsy, accessed April 9, 2016, https://www.artsy.net/article/phillips-william-eggleston-the-no-muss-no-fuss. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Julie L. Belcove, "William Eggleston: Once vilified for his color images of humdrum daily life, the enigmatic man who turned art photography on its ear is getting his due.," W Magazine, last modified November 2008, accessed January 23, 2016, http://www.wmagazine.com/culture/art-anddesign/2008/11/william_eggleston?currentPage=1. 60 Ibid. 61 Weski, "The Tender-Cruel Camera," Eggleston Trust. 62 Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 27. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Weski, "The Tender-Cruel Camera," Eggleston Trust. 66 Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 27. 67 Weski, "The Tender-Cruel Camera," Eggleston Trust. 68 Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 27. 69 Rohrbach, Penichon, and Walker, Color: American Photography Transformed, 155. 70 Rohrbach, Penichon, and Walker, Color: American Photography Transformed,157. 71 Ibid. 72 Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 26. 73 Rohrbach, Penichon, and Walker, Color: American Photography Transformed,157. 74 Eggleston and Szarkowski, William Eggleston's Guide, 9. 75 Ibid., 8-9. 39
Ramakrishnan 23
76
Weski, "The Tender-Cruel Camera," Eggleston Trust. Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 William Eggleston, Agnès Sire, and Thomas Weski, William Eggleston: From Black and White to Color (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2014), 192. 80 Ibid. 81 Bussard and Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color, 237. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 "William Eggleston - unseen Kodachrome dye transfer process photos on show for the first time ever," Phaidon, accessed January 20, 2016, http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2012/september/25/william-eggleston-unseenkodachrome-dye-transfer-process-photos-on-show-for-the-first-time-ever/. 85 Mark Holborn, "William Eggleston: American epic," FT Magazine, last modified September 4, 2012, accessed January 20, 2016, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6d577b68-fc72-11e1-ac0f00144feabdc0.html#axzz27TZigswR. 86 Kivlan, "William 'Eggleston: Who’s Afraid," American Suburb X. 87 Ibid. 88 "Greenwood, Mississippi," The J. Paul Getty Museum, accessed April 8, 2016, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/126324/william-eggleston-greenwood-mississippi-american1973/. 89 Kivlan, "William 'Eggleston: Who’s Afraid," American Suburb X. 90 Ibid. 91 John Szarkowski, "The Museum Of Modern Art Oral History Program," interview by Sharon Zane, last modified June 23, 1994, accessed January 11, 2016, https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/learn/archives/transcript_szarkowski.pdf. 92 A.D. Coleman, "On the Subject of John Szarkowski: An Open Letter to the Director and Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art," n.d., digital file. 93 "New Documents: February 28 - May 7, 1967," news release, 92, accessed April 9, 2016, https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/3860/releases/MOMA_1967_JanJune_0034_21.pdf?2010. 94 John Howell, "In Plain Sight: Photographs by William Eggleston," Aperture, 2001, [Page #], accessed November 2, 2015, http://www.egglestontrust.com/aperture_winter_2001.html. 95 Weski, "The Tender-Cruel Camera," Eggleston Trust. 96 Ibid. 97 Szarkowski, "The Museum Of Modern," interview. 98 "New Documents: February 28 - May 7, 1967," news release, 92. 99 Christopher Phillips, "The Judgment Seat of Photography," October 22 (August 1982): [Page #], accessed April 6, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/778362. 100 Ibid. 101 Szarkowski, "The Museum Of Modern," interview.; Mark Durden, "Eyes Wide Open: John Szarkowski," Art in America, May 2006,85, accessed October 24, 2015, http://puffin.harker.org:2052/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=21032367&site=src-live. 102 Szarkowski, "The Museum Of Modern," interview. 103 Belcove, "William Eggleston: Once vilified," W Magazine. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 77
Ramakrishnan 24
106
Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 26. Ibid. 108 Moore, Crump, and Rubinfien, Starburst: Color Photography in America, 26. 109 Szarkowski, "The Museum Of Modern," interview. 110 Eggleston and Szarkowski, William Eggleston's Guide, 9. 111 Kivlan, "William 'Eggleston: Who’s Afraid," American Suburb X. 112 Rohrbach, Penichon, and Walker, Color: American Photography Transformed, 26-32. 113 Bussard and Hostetler, Color Rush: American Color, 11. 107
Ramakrishnan 25
Bibliography "Arbus, Diane." Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography. Accessed April 8, 2016. http://cw.routledge.com/ref/20cphoto/arbus.html. Barrett, Terry. Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images. 5th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2012. Barthes, Roland, and Geoff Dyer. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Pbk. ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010. Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. London: Reaktion, 2000. Belcove, Julie L. "William Eggleston: Once vilified for his color images of humdrum daily life, the enigmatic man who turned art photography on its ear is getting his due." W Magazine. Last modified November 2008. Accessed January 23, 2016. http://www.wmagazine.com/culture/art-anddesign/2008/11/william_eggleston?currentPage=1. Bussard, Katherine A., and Lisa Hostetler. Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman. New York: Aperture, 2013. Coleman, A.D. "On the Subject of John Szarkowski: An Open Letter to the Director and Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art." N.d. Digital file. Duncan, David Douglas. Korea. 1950. University of California, San Diego. Accessed April 3, 2016. http://library.artstor.org/library/iv2.html?parent=true#. Durden, Mark. "Eyes Wide Open: John Szarkowski." Art in America, May 2006, 83-89. Accessed October 24, 2015. http://puffin.harker.org:2052/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=21032367&site=srclive. Eauclaire, Sally. The New Color Photography. New York: Abbeville Press, 1981. Eggleston, William. Huntsville, Alabama. 1970. Dye-transfer print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Accessed April 8, 2016. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-ofart/1991.1271/. ———. Memphis. 1969-1970. Dye transfer print. Corcoran Gallery of Art. Accessed April 4, 2016. http://library.artstor.org/library/iv2.html?parent=true#. ———. Memphis. 1971. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Accessed April 9, 2016. http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/126201/william-eggleston-memphisamerican-negative-about-1971-print-1980/.
Ramakrishnan 26
———. Untitled (Bicycle on Sidewalk). 1970-1974. Cheim & Read, New York. Accessed April 9, 2016. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/william-eggleston-untitled-bicycle-on-sidewalk. ———. Untitled (The Red Room). 1973. Dye transfer print on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Accessed April 4, 2016. http://library.artstor.org/library/iv2.html?parent=true#. Eggleston, William, Agnès Sire, and Thomas Weski. William Eggleston: From Black and White to Color. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2014. Eggleston, William, and John Szarkowski. William Eggleston's Guide. 2nd ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002. George Eastman Museum. "Dye Transfer Printing." Eastman Museum. Accessed October 24, 2015. http://eastman.org/technicolor/technology/dye-transfer-printing. Golden, Michelle. "William Eggleston Living Color." PDN. Last modified January 2003. Accessed October 20, 2015. http://www.egglestontrust.com/pdn_0103.html. "Greenwood, Mississippi." The J. Paul Getty Museum. Accessed April 8, 2016. http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/126324/william-eggleston-greenwoodmississippi-american-1973/. Holborn, Mark. "William Eggleston: American epic." FT Magazine. Last modified September 4, 2012. Accessed January 20, 2016. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6d577b68-fc72-11e1-ac0f00144feabdc0.html#axzz27TZigswR. Howell, John. "In Plain Sight: Photographs by William Eggleston." Aperture, 2001. Accessed November 2, 2015. http://www.egglestontrust.com/aperture_winter_2001.html. Keller, Katherine. Installation view of the exhibition, "William Eggleston." May 24, 1976. Photograph. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. New York. Accessed April 4, 2016. http://library.artstor.org/library/iv2.html?parent=true#. Kivlan, Anna Kerrer. "William 'Eggleston: Who’s Afraid of Magenta, Yellow and Cyan?'" American Suburb X. Last modified July 1, 2015. Accessed October 20, 2015. http://www.americansuburbx.com/2015/07/william-eggleston-whos-afraid-of-magentayellow-and-cyan.html. Kozloff, Max. "“Photography: The Coming to Age of Color." Artforum, January 1975, 30-35. "Marie Cosindas: Polaroid Color Photographs." News release. . PDF.
Ramakrishnan 27
Moore, Kevin D., James Crump, and Leo Rubinfien. Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010. Muray, Nickolas. Woman in cell, playing solitaire. 1950. Kodachrome transparency, chromogenic development process. George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. Accessed April 8, 2016. http://licensing.eastmanhouse.org/GEH/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox_VPage&VBID=2744W NBIMONW&IT=ZoomImage01_VForm&IID=2F3XC5CYEZLC&PN=107&CT=Searc h. "New Documents: February 28 - May 7, 1967." News release. Accessed April 9, 2016. https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/3860/releases/MOMA _1967_Jan-June_0034_21.pdf?2010. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present. Completely rev. and enl. ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982. Phillips, Christopher. "The Judgment Seat of Photography." October 22 (August 1982): 27-63. Accessed April 6, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/778362. Rohrbach, John, Sylvie Penichon, and Andrew Walker. Color: American Photography Transformed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Strand, Paul. "Photography." Camera Work, June 1917, 3-4. Digital file. Szarkowski, John. "The Museum Of Modern Art Oral History Program." Interview by Sharon Zane. Last modified June 23, 1994. Accessed January 11, 2016. https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/learn/archives/transcript_szarkowski. pdf. Weski, Thomas. "The Tender-Cruel Camera." Eggleston Trust. Accessed April 8, 2016. http://www.egglestontrust.com/hasselblad_weski.html. Weston, Edward. "Seeing Photographically." The Complete Photographer 9, no. 49 (1943): 3200-06. Digital file. "William Eggleston: The No Muss, No Fuss Master of Color Photography." Artsy. Accessed April 9, 2016. https://www.artsy.net/article/phillips-william-eggleston-the-no-muss-nofuss. "William Eggleston - unseen Kodachrome dye transfer process photos on show for the first time ever." Phaidon. Accessed January 20, 2016. http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2012/september/25/williameggleston-unseen-kodachrome-dye-transfer-process-photos-on-show-for-the-first-timeever/.
The Harker School | 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose CA 95129 OofC: 4/16 (RM)