as cheap, common, and not artistic. Color photo-
graphy seemed to distort compositions, exagger-
ating contrasts, emphasizing certain colors and
de-emphasizing others that, in black and white
photography, would have held the same visual
weight. Color photography necessitates careful
consideration of formal elements in more complex
terms than those demanded by traditional black
and white photography.
Eggleston’s earliest color photographs illustrate
surroundings familiar to him: friends, family, homes,
and neighborhoods, as well as more trivial details
from daily life, such as a light fixture on a ceiling, a
pile of trash bags leaning against a building, or the
inside of an empty oven. As he branched out to less
familiar territory, he continued to focus on typically
unremarkable visions from daily life, such as the in-
terior of a frosted-over freezer filled with food; a
shower stall with a mint green tub and tiles, gleaming
stainless hardware, and stained grout; or a shot of
shoes, a dime, and a gilt-framed mirror stashed
beneath a bed. He is especially well known for his
interiors, abandoned landscapes, and lone, centrally-
placedfigures.Ofhis photographs,Egglestonsays,‘‘I
like to think of them as parts of a novel I’m doing’’
(Knape 1999, unpaginated).
Eggleston’s color photographs of trivial images
from mundane life sparked considerable contro-
versy following his MoMA exhibition, the first
solo exhibition of an artist using color photogra-
phy at the museum.Photographs by William Eggle-
stonpresented 75 dye transfer prints, all shot on
transparency film between 1969 and 1971. The
snapshot-quality of the images, with commonplace
subjects and informal, seemingly offhand composi-
tions, left audiences wondering how the images
were different from those taken by any amateur
photographer. The stigma against color photo-
graphs exacerbated the issue. Harsh critical reviews
of the show criticized Eggleston’s ‘‘snapshot chic’’
as boring, banal, and unacceptable.
Exhibition curator John Szarkowski, then Direc-
tor of the Department of Photographs at the
MoMA, had first met Eggleston in 1967 at the sug-
gestion of mutual friends Garry Winogrand, Diane
Arbus, and Lee Friedlander. Szarkowski immedi-
ately liked Eggleston’s work, but was unable to
secure exhibition funding for several years at least
partly because of the historical bias against color
photography. According to Szarkowski, color pho-
tography prior to the 1970s had ‘‘failed’’ in two
ways: either photographers neglected to consider
color as an integral element of the composition, or
they focused solely on color as a formal element
separate from other aspects of a composition. In
neither case did artists consider color holistically.
Eggleston’s holistic approach to his photographs is
what, according to Szarkowski, separated his work
from that of other photographers, professional and
amateur alike.
The central compositions of Eggleston’s photo-
graphs also seemed to relate them to amateur photo-
graphy, in which the casual photographer centers
each subject perfectly in the frame. On closer inspec-
tion, Eggleston’s compositions are complex and
highly ordered. As Alfred Barr noted in 1972, Eggle-
ston’s compositions seem to radiate from a central
point like a wheel, as inSouthern Environs of Mem-
phis, 1971. Eggleston acknowledged this recurring
design and explained it as mimicking the Confeder-
ate flag (a comparison for which he has received
much criticism).
The apparent simplicity of his compositions belies
their complex sources of inspiration: theukiyo-e
viewpoint (‘‘pictures of the floating world’’) of Japa-
nese art mediated through the work of Post-Im-
pressionist painters and printmakers such as Degas
and Toulouse-Lautrec. Whether shot from above or
below the subject, Eggleston’s photographs are not
taken from typical eye level. Regarding his photo-
graphUntitled(Tricycle), c. 1970, in which the extre-
mely low perspective angle makes a child’s tricycle
appear monumental, Eggleston said:
Sometimes I like the idea of making a picture that does
not look like a human picture. Humans make pictures
which tend to be about five feet above the ground look-
ing out horizontally. I like very fast flying insects moving
all over and I wonder what their view is from moment to
moment. I have made a few pictures which show that
physical viewpoint. The tricycle is similar. It is an
insect’s view or it could be a child’s view.
(Holborn 1992, 23–24)
By subverting the viewer’s usual viewpoint,
Eggleston confers new depth to the mundane sub-
jects individuals take for granted every day.
Following Eggleston’s MoMA exhibition, critic
Janet Malcolm suggested that such snapshot-style
photographs had become acceptable material for
an exhibition at MoMA because of the work of the
Photorealists of the 1960s and 1970s, who painted
large-scale, often mundane subjects with photo-
graphic precision. She called photographers such
as Eggleston ‘‘photo-Photo-Realists.’’ Subsequent
critics have refuted her claim of a connection, but
the pervasiveness of trivial objects in the art of both
groups is surely significant.
Eggleston had spent time in New York in the 1970s
with Pop artist Andy Warhol and his circle of friends
at the Chelsea Hotel. Eggleston’s realist images, fullEGGLESTON, WILLIAM