Ways of Seeing William Eggleston // Izzy Woods I didn't even have to think about it. To me, William Eggleston and nostalgia seemed synonymous. I’m not sure when Eggleston’s photographs entered my world, but they feature in my A-level sketchbooks along with some questionable explorations of colour theory. I think about him a lot. As someone whose aesthetic and academic interests often find their way back to colour, how could I not be enamoured by the rich, saturated tones in his photographs? They evoke a nostalgia for a time I never lived through. The beauty of his work paints a picture of a world seen through rose tinted glasses, and it’s a comforting world I want to surround myself with. Yet, beyond the familiar scenes of cars, consumerism and the home, there lurks a sense of something not quite right. A sense that beyond the picture there is a hidden danger, initially obscured by the warmth and familiarity of Eggleston’s subjects. God, he is smart, I think. For him to question and blur the line between beauty and danger, the known and the unknown and to consider the formal elements of colour, texture and composition? Well, he must be a genius. I dove straight into research for this article. I had studied Eggleston before, but only through my own visual analysis. I googled ‘William Eggleston nostalgia’ expecting to find paper after paper on how his use of light and colour creates a nostalgic haze, how his familiar subjects are used to appeal to a nostalgia within all of us. Nothing. What I found, or rather what I didn’t find, created a dilemma for me and the subject of this article. William Eggleston was born in 1939 and has lived most of his life in Tennessee. He began photographing his surroundings in the 1950s, later experimenting with colour photography in the 1960s. Eggleston made his MoMA debut in 1976 with an exhibition titled “William Eggleston’s Guide”. Aside from his groundbreaking use of colour photography, his work provided an unprecedented view into the American South. He called his approach ‘photographing democratically’ since there were no heroes or political agendas within his images. In his own words: ‘It was just there, and I was interested in it.’ His profile on the Gagosian website calls him a modern day flâneur, and the more I read about him, the more this made sense. Eggleston observes, and in photographing these mundane scenes he lifts them and gives us permission to see. It was simply the case that he liked what he saw, and that was enough. As this was beginning to settle in my mind, the more it seemed ridiculous for authors to try and attribute meaning to his work. It seemed almost inauthentic and propagandist. His work isn't meant to be analysed - his whole process is intuitive, rather than analytic.
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