William Eggleston and the Revolution of Colour Photography

William Eggleston, frequently referred to as “the godfather of colour photography”, was one of the most prominent influencers in developing colour photography as a well established medium at a time when it was ridiculed by artists and mainly limited to commercial advertising. This combined with the everyday commonality of his subject matter; lead Eggleston to become one of the most pivotal documentary photographers of the 20^th century.

Eggleston was born in 1939 in Tennessee and raised on his family’s cotton plantation in Mississippi, in the Deep South of America. Although he studied art at the University of Mississippi for about five years, Eggleston received no formal qualifications and after abandoning his education in the early 1960s, he began to explore the medium of photography by learning from books by famous photographers such as Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. Eggleston bought his first camera in 1957 and although he started shooting in black and white, he soon thereafter began using colour film in 1965. He later progressed to the use of dye-transfer printing, which allowed him to achieve the bold and vivid colours that are consistent throughout his work. Although critics may have initially thought Eggleston’s work looked cheap, dye-transfer printing was actually the most expensive process available and allowed Eggleston to boldly define each colour and its saturation individually within the print making process.

In 1976 with the support of John Szarkowski, an influential historian, critic and curator, Eggleston’s work was showcased at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the gallery’s first ever solo exhibition titled “Colour Photographs”. At the time critics viewed the show, which featured 75 prints in vivid deeply saturated colour, as insulting and boring. Not only were critics confused about the concept behind his photographs, but also why Eggleston would dare to use colour when at the time it’s use was seen as highly distasteful and kitsch. The New York Times later labeled the exhibition “the most hated show of the year”. Decades later this exhibition is now regarded as the fundamental moment that helped established Eggleston’s career as an artist and the development of colour photography as a contemporary art form. 

People were always Eggleston’s main subjects, captured unaware as they went about their daily routines. “It was (and is) tough to understand his work, particularly because many of his images seem to show nothing of substantial importance in them, such as the inside of a freezer, an empty living room, or a green shower stall. He leaves it up to us to do the work to figure out these mysterious moments and places.” (Maher:2016) In the 1970s Eggleston became fascinated with the Memphis night club scene and often frequented bars and clubs, becoming friends with musicians, performers and artists of all types, whom in turn were his subject matter. “…He wasn’t interested in photographing “decisive moments” like Cartier-Bresson nor was he interested in capturing esoteric characters or extraordinary moments. He was all about finding the beauty in the mundane.” (Kim, s.a.). 

William Eggleston was a pioneer and genius of his generation. His careful compositions and mundane subject matter questioned the notion of surrounding beauty and his use of heightened colour revolutionised colour photography to become an acceptable fine art form.