William Eggleston

After watching a documentary on William Eggleston, it shows how he has photographed Memphis over his 50 year career. He was born in the Tennessee town back in 1939 and has spent his entire life there shooting images. He is known for shooting was is considered the boring, he would photography it and made look very interesting. I feel that being able to make the "boring" look really interesting is the sign of a brilliant photographer. Eggleston received his first camera in 1957 aged 18, he was self taught and still today shoots on film. He had his first exhibition in the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1976.

Eggleston was the first to use colour film and brought to the rest of the world, due to his photos of the "boring" and colour his first exhibition was slated by critics who found it tedious. After gaining his first camera he began reading about Kodak and experimenting to try and become a better photographer.

His most famous photograph is of a light bulb in a red room, the photo is also known for its sexual posters in the bottom corner of the image. Over his highly successful career Eggleston has not only been regarded as one of the best photographers but also one of the most influential, this became evident to me when almost everybody in my college group was influenced by him during a project.

When talking about his famous photo The Red Ceiling, shown above, he said that he has tried to recreate the image but said he had never been able to recreate it to his satisfaction he also regards it as his challenging and powerful pieces of work.

He may consider what he takes photos of "the boring" but his images are far from that some of his photographs are the most spectacular and brilliant photographs that I have ever seen, to me they seem even more brilliant when you realise how simplistic they actually are.

Eggleston is regarded as the man who brought colour photography to the world and his photography certainly showed the work what was capable with colour photography and he has done it in the best way possible.
With the top image I would say that this image was originally just a random photo that Eggleston decided to take but now I believe he says he uses it to remember someone who was murdered in the room. Just looking at the image it is quite an interesting one, the wires across the ceiling are quite interesting as some of them do resemble cracks in the ceiling. The black part at the bottom of the image looks like a window but looking at the enlarged version of the image it is red in the background so it may just be something lent against the wall.

The second image is quite interesting because it shows the wreck of a car balancing over the edge of a building. Another fascinating thing about this image is the sky it is near perfect as their is no clouds in the sky which makes the image what it is. The different colours of blue are brilliant the light blue colour on the building and the darker blue in the sky compliment each other so well the truly changes the image for a good one to a spectacular one. Looking at the photo and the different vehicles in the shot I would have the guess that this image was taken during the 1960s. Like all of Eggleston's other images it was taken in Memphis, Tennessee.

The bottom image is quite similar to the second due the fact that the blues not only compliment each other so well but also because the two blues are quite similar. The blue on the pole and one the building in the second are quite similar as well and the blue in the sky is a bit darker in the bottom image. This image was taken during the documentary so it was most likely between 2008 and 2011. The most interesting part for me in this image is the item wrapped around the pole which is mostly red but has many other colours on it as well which is quite fascinating as well.