The American photographer William Eggleston emerged in the early 1960s as one of the pioneers of modern color photography. Today, fifty years later, he is the figure most associated with its proliferation. The exhibition At War with the Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presents a large selection of his work, mostly taken at his home in the Mississippi Delta. This region has inspired a number of his famous photographs, luxurious studies of the physical and social landscape of the American South.
Eggleston’s camera captures pretty much everything: panoramas of American landscapes, roads, cars, houses, personal and abandoned belongings, men and women posing for portraits, streets scenes and intimate moments. His highly poetic visual language has a clear sense of composition and chromatic harmony.
By adopting the intense colors reserved at the time for advertising and commercial photography, Eggleston declared himself, “at war with the obvious.” His opponent was a photography scene that only considered black-and-white images to be works of art, and made its purchases accordingly. A one-picture manifesto in favor of color, “Untitled [Memphis]” (1970), with a child’s tricycle front-and-center, appeared on the cover of Eggleston’s first book, which accompanied his historic exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1976. Today, the Metropolitan Museum has organized a new tribute to coincide with its acquisition of 36 of the artist’s photographs in 2012, expanding the museum’s collection and furthering Eggleston’s fame.
Jonas Cuénin
At War with the Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston
From February 28th to July 28th, 2013
Au Metropolitan Museum de New York
The Howard Gilman Gallery, 852
1000 5th Ave
New York, NY 10028
USA
(212) 535-7710
