Film Review: By the Ways: A Journey with William Eggleston, 2007

I was prepared to write a review of this film but found Neil Young has hit all the major points I wished to make.  I did, though, learn about Tav Falco, a musician and photographer who served as Eggleston's assistant in the early 1970's.  At first I thought he must be an actor playing a scripted part dreamed up by the filmmakers, but he is in fact for real, hairdo and all.  Eggleston's world is so redolent of a David Lynch creation.  

In any case, you can safely skip this film unless you're a diehard who needs to see everything about Eggleston. If you want to buy my DVD copy, post a comment here or send me an email.  

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Book Review: Eggleston, William. Ancient and Modern, Random House, 1992

The UAE university library system has two Eggleston photobooks:  The Hasselbald Award and this volume, Ancient and Modern.  Both are similar in presenting career overviews, this one featuring about 150 images.  As such the book doesn't really hold up thematically, though it does showcase some of the more famous images, such as the red roof, the yellow sink, the Elvis portrait, peaches.  What I discovered here is that Eggleston has traveled a bit outside the US.  I was surprised to find images of Egypt and Kenya and I would like to see more.  Perhaps the most startling piece in the collection is from South Africa, a basket of oranges bottom left and the remainder featuring a wall bathed in soft yellow-orange light.  I haven’t been able to google a copy, so maybe I’ll have to scan one. The introductory essay by Mark Holborn is the kind of biographical review you might expect to find in a book pitched to a general audience.  Still, there were things to discover, such as the photographer's reaction to Walker Evan’s frontal field of view, with Eggleston appreciating more the varied angles of Cartier-Bresson.  I was also surprised to note Eggleston’s interest  in using color for creative effect, not just capturing it as presented.  My perception of him thus far has been something of a documentarian.  This may require revision.  Thus far most of the photobooks I've checked out from the university library system seem to have been largely unopened.  This one appears to have been reviewed, as the evidence here clearly shows.

Review: The Hasselblad Award 1998: William Eggleston

Inspired by In The Real World, I went looking for a book of Eggleston photos and found that all of the UAE’s university and college libraries together carry only one volume, a book published in conjunction with a major photography award presented to Eggleston in 1998.  The book features 61 images, two essays (by Walter Hopps, Curator of the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; and Thomas Weski, Curator of Photography and Media, Sprengel Museum, Hanover), and a transcribed interview (by Ute Eskildsen, Director of the Department of Photography, Museum Folkwang, Essen).  Also included is what appears to be a useful Bibliography of portfolios, monographs, catalogs, articles and essays.

Film Review: William Eggleston in the Real World (2005)

I didn’t think much of William Eggleston in the Real World, at least at the beginning, where 20 minutes of film consists of 5 minutes narration while Eggleston ambles about taking photos, or while a somewhat drunk (or perhaps demented) friend (by the name of Leigh Haizlip) sucks on a lollipop and babbles about cancer and death while Eggleston doodles. The film seemed rather self-indulgent.  But once past these scenes, the director begins surveying some of Eggleston’s images, and the photographer begins to talk a bit about his work.  By the end I was inspired, not so much by Eggleston’s images as his work ethic.  I remember someone in the film citing a huge number representing Eggleston’s career output in individual images (which I can neither recall nor find).  Eggleston himself says he never used contact sheets and printed every image he ever took (surely an exaggeration but even so suggestive of his habits).  Obviously, Eggleston was obsessive.   His energy and drive could sustain a few photographic careers.

In our current age of mass ownership of cameras, in which a picture of just about anything can be found with a Google or Flickr search, perhaps Eggleston’s work has been stripped of its context. A massive collection of images of everyday things is now ordinary.  All that remains to Eggleston is his historical importance and a body of work inspirational in its enormity.