Largely credited with legitimizing color photography as a fine art form, William Eggleston has inspired generations of photographers, artists and filmmakers through the course of his fifty-year career. Guided by a neutral, ambivalent gaze, his images monumentalize everyday subjects in urban and rural life, portraits of passersby, and scenes from friend’s homes, his own refrigerator, or the side of the road. Within his compositional frame, every element carries equal formal and emotional weight. The 1976 "William Eggleston: Color Photographs" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and its accompanying publication “William Eggleston's Guide” helped to formally establish his reputation as a world-renowned artist. The show was considered groundbreaking for Eggleston’s striking, saturated color, achieved through his dye-transfer process, but also for his observational style, often called "democratic.” Primarily and profoundly influenced by the candid perspectives of the late French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eggleston’s practice continues to provoke conversation around the role of the artist in mediating reality.
William Eggleston is a native Memphian with international recognition. He attended Vanderbilt, Delta State University and the University of Mississippi. His work has been the subject of many exhibitions around the globe, from New York to Paris, London to Sydney. In 2004, he received the International Center for Photography Award and Getty Images Lifetime Achievement Award. He is featured in the collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Morris Museum, Augusta, GA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; and the Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, among others.
