|
William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, June 20–September 20, 2009
|
|
WASHINGTON, D.C.—On June 20, the Corcoran Gallery of Art will open William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961–2008, a retrospective of images by William Eggleston (b. 1939), who pioneered a new era in color photography with his extraordinary pictures of familiar, everyday subjects. Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in association with Haus der Kunst in Munich, William Eggleston: Democratic Camera is the most comprehensive exhibition of Eggleston’s work ever staged in the United States. On view until September 20, the exhibition brings together more than 150 photographs—some never-before-exhibited—made over five decades by this groundbreaking artist. When Eggleston’s color photographs were shown publicly in the 1970s, they ruptured public understanding of the medium, long-dominated by black-and-white imagery. Eggleston distinguished himself by treating color as a means of discovery and expression, and as a way to highlight aspects of lifehidden in plain sight. In his photographs, figures, places, and objects that might otherwise be disregarded as commonplace or unremarkable—such as an airplane tray table, an overstocked freezer, or a parking lot—are dominant. With a democratic and open-minded approach, he has consistently photographed daily life as though collecting fragments from his experiences. Inspired by the simplicity of snapshots and complexity of saturated colors found everywhere within his personal environment, William Eggleston: Democratic Camera is co-curated by Elisabeth Sussman, curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Thomas Weski, former deputy director of Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, now professor of the study of curatorial cultures at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig. Amanda Maddox, assistant curator of photography and media arts, is the organizing curator at the Corcoran. “Eggleston’s sense of color and composition is impeccable. His work is marked by a deep concern with equal consideration and evenhanded treatment of all his subjects. He knows and loves his terrain: the new supermarkets, sidewalks, driveways, patios, shiny cars, dinner settings, gas stations, and houses of the middle class, the interiors of elegant old Southern homes, the bars and their habitués. He captures landscape and architecture in unexpected ways—for instance his famous view upwards to the ceiling in a red room, or the empty space of a green tiled bathroom. And, importantly, Eggleston, though not a portraitist in a traditional sense, has a cool, but not uncomplicated view of the people he often photographs in these environments,” Sussman said. By the mid-1970s, Eggleston’s color photographs garnered significant attention, particularly after The Museum of Modern Art’s photography curator John Szarkowski showed a selection of them in a landmark exhibition in 1976. This solo show at MoMA and the accompanying book, William Eggleston’s Guide, helped confirm Eggleston’s impact and influence as the leading color Speaking to Eggleston’s trademark snapshot-like approach, Weski writes in the William Eggleston: Democratic Camera catalogue: “In many of his early pictures, the observer gets the feeling that Eggleston composed the photograph only roughly and accepted everything that fell within the established frame. This approach led to prints that integrated the unpredictable into the picture and thus accepted the stroke of chance. For Eggleston, everything in front of the camera was basically worthy of a picture.” The exhibition includes Eggleston’s cult video work, Stranded in Canton. In the 1960s, Eggleston used film to document Fred McDowell, a well-known Delta blues musician, but ultimately abandoned the film project. Eggleston later acquired a video camera and began using video to shoot in bars and in people's homes; sometimes he shot monologues friends delivered for his video camera, most often at night. The result, Stranded in Canton, recently restored and re-edited, is a portrait of a woozy subculture that adds dimension and texture to the world of Eggleston’s color photographs. Still a resident of Memphis, Eggleston is a prolific recorder of his birthplace, the Mississippi Delta and throughout the American South, and has photographed extensively all over the world. His stunning black-and-white video Stranded in Canton, much of it shot late at night in bars and on the streets, shows a hidden Southern subculture in a series of soliloquies and arguments. Commissioned projects have taken Eggleston to Georgia, where he photographed future president Jimmy Carter’s hometown prior to his election in 1976, to Elvis Presley’s home at Graceland in Memphis, where he recorded the strangeness of its opulent interiors, and to Louisiana, where he documented its residents and derelict plantation houses. Collectively, his images of the South form an iconic, elegant portrait of the region. As recognition for his work increased over time, Eggleston has traveled further afield to photograph in such countries as Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, England, and China. Among his many books are William Eggleston’s Guide (1976), The Democratic Forest (1989), Ancient and Modern (1992), and Spirit of Dunkerque (2008). His work has been exhibited at and collected by museums worldwide. PRESS PREVIEW VISITOR INFORMATION ***On Wednesday, June 17 at 7 p.m., artist William Eggleston will appear in dialogue with Michael Almereyda, the director and producer of the award-winning documentary film, William Eggleston in the Real World.*** MEMBERSHIP Additional support is provided by the Stephen C. and Katherine D. Sherrill Foundation, Lauren and Louis DePalo, the William Talbott Hillman Foundation, and The Gage Fund. The exhibition presentation at the Corcoran Gallery of Art is made possible by Christie’s.
|
Kristin Guiter, Head of PR,
|
