William Eggleston, a resident of Memphis and one of photography’s most influential figures, is featured at Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts through May 1.
His solo exhibition, “Anointing the Overlooked,” showcases 50 photographs that transform ordinary moments into unforgettable images.
Eggleston was a key figure in legitimizing color photography as an artistic medium. By not censoring, rarely editing and photographing the seemingly forgettable, Eggleston reminds viewers of the inherent democratic uses of photography and our widespread access to it.
“Anointing the Overlooked” demonstrates that Eggleston, most celebrated for his photographs of the American South, is equally at ease across the country and around the world. His motivation for making color photography was simple and decidedly unpretentious. He wanted to see a lot of things in color because the world is in color. Unlike many photographers, who take hundreds of pictures of a subject to achieve the “perfect” image, Eggleston is an artist with personal discipline who makes “one picture of one thing.”
Born in Memphis in 1939 at the end of the Great Depression, Eggleston spent most of his formative years interested in painting and audio technology. Since turning to photography, he has been a remarkable chronicler of a culture that was being transformed by racial integration, air conditioning, strip malls, shopping carts and fast-food chain restaurants. While rooted in a specific place and time, Eggleston’s depictions of these transformations have universal resonance that continues today.