DeCordova Collects Photographs: Recent Acquisitions
William Eggleston
William Eggleston is widely considered one of the most important color photographers in America. It was in the 1960s, in an effort to more accurately portray the tactile qualities of life in the rural south that Eggleston abandoned black and white photography to experiment with new color technology. Though sometimes the result of manipulation, Eggleston’s use of color is never pretty or functionless. It exists in his photographs because it exists in his world. That is not to say that all color is natural. The alien green glow which tints the light spewing from the window of the ambiguous structure in Untitled, 1992 seems most unnatural in fact. The seemingly careless method of cropping Untitled is typical of much of Eggleston’s work. With a casualness reminiscent of a snapshot, he portrays such idiosyncratic subject matter as parked cars, dogs lapping water from puddles and ceiling fixtures. But despite their apparent banality, Eggleston’s images are defiantly intelligent. Stripped of pretension and reduced to the facts, they are convincing substitutes for all that they endeavor to record.
