William Eggleston's photographs have nothing to do with words

“I just believe in taking one picture of one picture. I don’t think it helps to take more than one. It’s very confusing later if you have a strip of six to choose one. It’s stupid(?) to have five extras.”
(found on http://thelarkeyexperiments.com) 
"This was the uncle that married my mother's sister and the black man was one of the servants, sort of, that raised me. And they are both gone (...) now but i was quite close to each one. (...) Someone pointed out that when two people live in the same house together for a certain long period of time, for years, they start to, not consciously, but almost imitate each other. Like, in the way they're standing" taken from an interview with him at Whitney (found on youtube.com)
'(...) But why not be silent, patient and watchful, like a photographer? (...) Fotography tends to show, describe, much more than it can explain" Michael Almareyda,  in his film William Eggleston in the Real World (found on youtube.com)
"The trouble is - whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it is just about impossible to follow up with words. They don't have anything to do with each other."
" He'll tell me 'I had the most fantastic photograph dream the other night, you know,' he's told me about all these colours involved. I think he's somehow trying to incorporate these dreams into a photograph (...) He didn't mean for any of these pictures to make any kind of statement." his youngest son, Winston talking about being his father's greatest fan and how he sees his father's work.(taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6J_nTCmAtw&feature=related)
'You must not take anything for granted when you see a photograph.' (said by Rosa Eggleston) 'Eggleston's usage of motives on the outer edges of his pictures and and his habit of his radically cropping people became his trademarks' (said by a narrator) (taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwgWmFNhKzk&feature=related)
'None of us was interested in what back then, a long time ago, was considered art photography, which was very large negative landscape, people like Ansel Adams or Edward Weston.(...) I thought it was wonderful having a first measure show (?). It got tremendous recognition. Great amount of it - negative. I felt sorry for them (the MoMA people?) cos it was obvious...it was like they had the wrong job. They didn't understand what they were looking at. And the job WAS to understand' (taken from film William Eggleston Photographer on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OuILnb3GE8)








Ok, photos have nothing to do with words, but they evoke feelings and i want to verbalize them. Beautiful, amazing, some of the scenes captured are utterly sad, they feel barren, devoid of any joy, am not sure why I like this... some of them stunning in their simplicity, great colours, composition. Eggleston sure was a very observant Master.



Images taken from the sites:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1991.1271
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/E/eggleston/eggleston_woman_on_swing_full.html
http://jawhiriaahmed.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html
http://thelarkeyexperiments.com/2009/12/22/advice-from-william-eggleston/
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/E/eggleston/eggleston_woman_on_curb_full.html
http://arttattler.com/commentarywilliameggleston.html - a great article on W. Eggleston
http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/08/william-egglestons-5x7-and-new-american.html - good too!

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