William Eggleston made color photography as an art form acceptable. Not everyone liked art photography in color, as people were used to black and white photos. I personally love his work, and when I first started taking photos, I found myself taking snapshots in an artistic way in hopes to mimic Eggleston's style. He takes photos that most people would find boring and maybe not even take the time to consider the subject worthy of taking a photo. But that’s the beauty of Eggleston's work: it’s finding something interesting in the things we see every day.
Some may not agree that his photos are art, but I think every individual makes that decision on their own. I love how his photos take us back to a certain time, and the vintage process of printing really brings the colors out, unlike today's printing processes. I believe a lot can be learned from Eggleston’s photos and his way of looking at the world. As many photographers, you first take a photo with your eye, then you bring the camera up to actually capture what you saw.
Much of the 14 years in the center of my professional career was doing cooystand work and slide duplication. I got good at perfect duplicates. Maybe that was art of a sort, I don't know. It was good work and I was pa8d well for it. Maybe it was bad and not creative. I'm still proud of that time.
I love Eggleston's photos. I feel like I was there, in each one of them. I feel the hot sun, smell the tar and concrete. And those colors...yes!
I don't care what went in making them - 'artistic intent' vs just driving around taking pictures of dumb stuff. It's history, culture, my own past. Call it whatever you want.
I loathe Eggleston's work.
Like all forms of art, it will appeal to some and not others. So your opinion is your own.
I call this kind of work - 'OH THE HUMANITY' like taking a cliche picture and because its cliche it somehow rises to an etheral level. OH! Picture of the american flag..must mean how terrible the USA is..ect ect
A picture of the flag doesn't mean that at all. That's just your interpretation, for some reason.
Then his photo was a success as it made you think!
I'm sorry, maybe I don't "feel" deeply enough, but to me Eggleston's work looks like the photo stream of consciousness that I see new digital camera photographers making and posting. "Oh look a book on a shelf." Sixteen shots later its off to the scrap of paper on the ground. Except for being in focus and properly exposed my daughter at 7 did as well as Eggleston. Most of us take these shots at sometime, but we usually delete them. We definitely don't post them or hang them in a big-city exhibition. It is not only Eggleston's work; many others that you see at museum exhibitions have the same type of photographs that any unknown photographer would be blasted in an on-line critique for posting (i.e., see Critique the Community here on Fstoppers). I refer to it as the "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome. If you can convince one of the influential art critics that your work is great then shazam it's great. Everyone will pile on about how deeply thoughtful, inspirational, and avant garde the work is; when the work is really just mundane to the majority of the people viewing it. But then again this is just my opinion and I am just part of the great unwashed.
Exactly.
I love Eggleston's work.
It's interesting how his work is hit or miss. One thing that has definitely worked in favour of his work is age.
I do like his use of colour, but some of the images... Meh.
I really liked this video. Never heard of this photographer before. I would call it color photos of color. Like in a world of black and white prints the man got some color film and went out looking for colors to take pictures of. Today it’s a past and lost time and that just makes it more interesting.