#2 – The Colourful Mr. Eggleston
Produced by BBC for its “Imagine” TV series, The Colourful Mr. Eggleston provides a rare look into the life and work of one of photography’s most influential proponents. William Eggleston was born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee to a family of plantation owners. He grew up in Sumner, Mississippi and spent six years studying at various art schools, never receiving a degree. When he received his first camera in 1957, a Canon rangefinder, he was hooked. As one of the first art photographers to use color film, he began visually recording the world around him, capturing everyday moments in life in compressed color and light.
Eggleston’s idols, Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans roamed the world for photographic subject matter. But Eggleston remained rooted in Memphis. His wife, Rosa, tells the story that one day Eggleston told a friend that there was nothing to photograph because everything in the city was ugly. The friend told him to “photograph the ugly stuff” which set him on a path photographing a contemporary landscape made up of vending machines, light bulbs, power poles, wires, signs, urban decay and occasionally human subjects.
The Colorful Mr. Eggleston follows his photographic process in and around Memphis as he isolates the facets of everyday life that make up the dense, atmospheric imagery of his work.