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.

Howard, Alastair and Beryl

Did this mean that I was amongst these writers who I myself was laughing at? After all I felt a strong sense of nostalgia looking at Eggleston’s photographs, and interpreted them as a commentary on the complexities of beauty, capitalism and poverty, amongst other things. I didn’t know how to reconcile the reality of his practice with the photographs’ place in my own life, especially since I was meant to be writing a piece on the very subject. Increasingly I became concerned that I would be trying too hard to force Eggleston and nostalgia together. In the end, opposites did not attract. I decided to scrap the article.

It was only a week or so later after deciding to reread John Berger’s Ways of Seeing that I had my lightbulb moment. It was the little push I needed to help me unravel whatever was buzzing around in my head. In the first chapter, Berger presents the concept of mystification, whereby our assumptions about the present obscure the realities of the past. It is hard to separate these two things - our only experience is of the time we currently live in, and while this doesn’t stop us from having knowledge of another time, it does render it almost impossible to fully understand past notions of beauty, taste, civilisation, etc. Berger cites the example of pictures on a TV screen. Whatever is shown on the screen enters the viewer’s house, and becomes embedded in that space, surrounded by the viewer’s belongings, their furniture, their family. In Berger’s words, ‘It lends its meaning to their meaning.’ Reading this felt like a eureka moment. It was ok that I got a sense of nostalgia from Eggleston’s photographs. I felt like I knew this already though. I’ve always appreciated the ability of art to appeal to individual thoughts and experiences. Something about

John, Joan and Helen

Eggleston’s work made it hard for me to reconcile the gap between the artist’s intentions and my own experience of his work. Perhaps it was the very stark contrast between the simplicity of his work and the complexity which I had attached to it. I’m still not too sure.

This brought something else to mind. In my last few years at secondary school, I developed a hatred towards my art teacher because I just could not understand why he seemed to maintain that every piece of art had to have a meaning. Of course, much of it is steeped in allegory and concept, but why couldn’t things just look beautiful for the sake of being beautiful? This made me question the impact my history of art degree has had upon the way that I see art. So much of it was the consideration of hidden context and symbol, and my interest in conceptual art means that a lot of the art I do consume requires some extra reading or investigation into the meaning of the piece. I don’t feel like I’ve lost my belief that art for beauty’s sake is more than enough, but my anger has faded after it became the norm to analyse works of art until they fell apart. Analysing Eggleston’s work changed my relationship to it by attaching meaning through implication.

What is probably clear by now is that through the writing of this piece I have experienced somewhat of an existential crisis. I’m writing this in the UK’s sixth week of coronavirus induced lockdown, and it’s safe to say I’ve had a lot of time to think. In the style of Eggleston, I have spent a lot of this time looking democratically. I’ve been trying to slowly enjoy my surroundings, noticing things

that I’m usually moving too quickly to see. I was at the point where I felt comfortable acknowledging that Eggleston’s photographs evoke a sense of nostalgia in me, even though this is far from where he was coming from in the act of taking them. But one thing remained for me. Why did I get this feeling of nostalgia? It seemed so obvious that I should feel this way about them. But why?

The golden haziness of Eggleston’s photographs reminds me of my grandparents’ photo albums that I would spend hours pouring over when I was young. I consider how Eggleston’s work was received at the time. His use of colour photography was revolutionary, and his lack of interest in traditional subjects was widely criticized. In the 70s, his work was new and modern and shocking. Fifty years on, his photographs have acquired this nostalgic aura, given fuel in a time where lack of stability in the present attracts us to the security of what has already been. Even so, it is a world we recognise. It seems that part of the nostalgia of his photography is more of a pan-cultural nostalgia. The centrality of 'Americana' in his photos (i.e. McDonalds, diners, old hot rods, Coca-Cola machines etc.) is part of a pop culture we all experienced growing up in a society dominated by American media. Eggleston doesn’t need traditional beauty or art historical tropes to attract people to his work. The appeal lies in his commitment to capture life, as it is, and without pretence. It is an honest reflection of our lives.

We can all take what we want from Eggleston’s photographs. Perhaps that’s the beauty of the simplicity of his work. His act of ‘photographing democratically’ gives the illusion that his scenes are a stage for life to play out on, his familiar subjects appealing to a sense of nostalgia within all of us.

Jill, Andrew, John and Helen

(Due to copyright I’ve been unable to include any of Eggleston’s photographs in this article. Instead I’ve used some of my family photos that echo some of the visual cues that I find so appealing in Eggleston’s work. Having said that, do give William Eggleston a quick google because his work really is beautiful - I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.)