Board_Advisors_etc 3..5

Leacock, a pioneer of video, invited him to work at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explor-
ing the possibilities of portable color video. His
work in video may have inspired Eggleston’s in-
creasing reliance on nontraditional subject matter
through the 1970s. In the same way that unedited
video moves from one focal point to another, doc-
umenting the transitory space between intended
subjects, Eggleston’s democratic camera captures
any fleeting, momentary scene and creates a subject
deemed equal in importance to more traditional
subjects, such as figures or landscapes.
Eggleston is an extremely prolific photographer.
He has produced tens of thousands of prints,
shooting each composition only once, as he prefers
to eliminate the option of choosing between differ-
ent versions of similar shots. Although he feels that
anything can be a legitimate subject Eggleston edits
his production ruthlessly; only a small portion of
the tens of thousands of prints he has made have
ever been shown.
Eggleston once claimed that his subject matter
was secondary to his photographs (Szarkowski
1976, 9). Such a formalist declaration on one
hand explains his democratic photography and his
glorification of the trivial, and on the other short-
changes his work by reducing his photographs to
purely aesthetic objects. His own statement, ‘‘I am
at war with the obvious,’’ points out the much
deeper issues at stake in his work: the public’s
expectations of photography and the artist’s inde-
pendence and authority in establishing standards
of legitimate content and modes of presentation.

RACHELKeith

Seealso:Evans, Walker; Museum of Modern Art;
Photography in the United States: the South; Szar-
kowski, John; Vernacular Photography

Biography

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, 27 July 1939. Studied at
Vanderbilt University, Memphis, Tennessee; Delta
State College, Cleveland, Mississippi; and the University
of Mississippi, Oxford. Begins taking photographs in

1957. Becomes an independent photographer in 1962;
      begins working in color in 1966. Lecturer in Visual and
      Environmental Studies at Harvard University, Cam-
      bridge, Massachusetts, 1974. Researcher in color video
      at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cam-
      bridge, Massachusetts, 1978–1979. John Simon Guggen-
      heim Memorial Fellowship, 1974, National Endowment
      for the Arts (NEA) Photographer’s Fellowship, 1975,
      and NEA survey grant, 1978, for a survey of Mississippi
      cotton farms using photography and color video. Has-
      selblad Foundation International Award in Photogra-
      phy, 1998. Resides in Memphis, Tennessee.

Selected Individual Exhibitions

1974 Jefferson Place Gallery; Washington, DC

1976 Photographs by William Eggleston; The Museum of

Modern Art, New York, New York, and traveling

1977 Election Eve; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington,

DC and traveling

1983 William Eggleston: Color Photographs from the Amer-

ican South; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Eng-

land, and traveling

1984 Elvis at Brooks: The Graceland. Photographs of Wil-

liam Eggleston; Memphis Art Museum, Memphis, Ten-

nessee

1984 Graceland and the South; Art Institute of Chicago,

Chicago, Illinois

1985 Bill Eggleston; Victoria and Albert Museum, London,

England

1985 Bill Eggleston: New Orleans Projects; Memphis

Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee

1987 Eggleston’s Egypt; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art,

Memphis, Tennessee

1990–1991William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest; Cor-

coran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1992 Ancient and Modern; Barbican Art Gallery, London,

England, and traveling

1999 William Eggleston;1998 Hasselblad Award Winner;

Hasselblad Center, Go ̈teborg, Sweden

Selected Group Exhibitions

1972 Photography Workshop International; Corcoran Gal-

lery of Art, Washington, DC

1974 Straight Color; Rochester Institute of Technology,

Rochester, New York

1975 Color Photography: Inventors and Innovators 1850–

1975 ; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Con-

necticut

1977 The Contemporary South; a United States Information

Agency traveling exhibition organized by the New

Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana

1978 Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since

1960 ; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New

York, and traveling

Selected Works

Lunch, 1963

Untitled(Toilet), 1970

Untitled(Tricycle), c. 1970, printed later

Greenwood, Mississippi(Red ceiling), 1973

Memphis(Green shower), early 1970s

14 Pictures(Shoes under bed), 1974

Troubled Waters(Food in freezer), 1980

The Louisiana Project(House), 1980

Further Reading

Eauclaire, Sally.The New Color Photography. New York:

Abbeville, 1981.

Eggleston, William.William Eggleston: Ancient and Mod-

ern. Introduction by Mark Holborn. New York: Ran-

dom House, 1992.

Knape, Gunilla, ed.The Hasselblad Award Winner 1998:

William Eggleston.Go ̈teborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Cen-

ter, 1999.

EGGLESTON, WILLIAM