[Leica] Eggleston

["Rod Fleming" <rodfleming@sol.co.uk>]

Hi

Tina wrote

>I know exactly what you mean!  The curator of a photographic exhibit of
>blurred, tilted, poorly printed photographs once told me condescendingly
>that the works were purposely "unaccessible" to the majority of
>people.  BULL!  It may make the "artist" feel superior to produce works
>that no one understands, but if they don't communicate anything, they are
>worthless worthless to me.

Tina, I am shocked. You do realise that this is William Eggleston we are
talking about, don't you? I have just pulled the catalogue of Ancient and
Modern, his exhibit at the Barbican some years ago, and your comments are, I
hope, about someone else. These are quite simply wonderful pictures. On the
wall they were nothing short of staggering; even in the book they are pure
dead brilliant.

I can quite honestly say that his pictures inspired and matured my vision of
colour photography. If that's the same as saying I have never been the same
since, so be it.

No question, Eggleston, together with Meyerovitz and Parr, is one of the
giants of late 20th century colour photography. If Nathan can't see that,
that's his problem. Remember the old saw; "You can take a horse to water,
but you can't make it drink." Nathan complains that there are very few
pictures of people in the show- so what? I like people pictures, but that
doesn't mean I'm closed to other sorts of work. And who says that horizons
have to be horizontal? Or that everything has to be pin-sharp? Cos then
we're going to have to chuck out Robert Frank and Cartier-Bresson too, for
that matter.

It's quite common for those who do not appreciate art to attack it; but as
far as I'm concerned, you can have every single bleedin picture of a mill by
a river at sunset or any of the other "postcard" guff that passes for colour
photography today, just so long as I get my choice of Eggleston's pix.

One of my tutors used to say, "People don't know what they like; they just
like what they know," and he was bang on the money. Without groundbreakers
like Eggleston, photography, which is an art, would simply stagnate.


By the way, and on a totally different topic, did you lot know that the US
Library of Congress has the copyright of all the FSA pictures, and that you
can buy an 11x14 hand print on FB (to exhibition quality, they say) for $30
USD + carriage? That's like- Dorothea Lang, Walker Evans, and many of the
most seminal monochrome photographers ever. My wife is ordering Lang's
"Migrant Mother" for my birthday.

I have to say that the Americans, and thanks to the Internet, the world, are
very fortunate to have such a resource, and one so accessible. Being able to
own some of the finest art the 20th century produced, to look at every day
in your own home, at a price that anyone can afford, is a truly exceptional
privilege.

Here you go

http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html

enjoy.

Look at it this way- how much would a Rembrandt etching cost you? (And I
wonder how much ol' Bill Eggleston's selling his stuff for? Bill? Bill? You
out there?)


Cheers


Rod