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Schaden.com - Projects * Publishing * for International Contemporary Photography

 

William Eggleston
Democratic Camera. Photographs and Video, 1958-2008
HC, 25 x 29 cm., o.pp.
Yale 2008

Drawing together Eggleston's famous and lesser-known works, this lavishly illustrated catalogue is the first to examine both his photography and videos. Of particular relevance are his black-and-white images from the late 1950s and 1960s, which helped shape his color photography, as well as the relationship between his provocative video recordings of 1970s Memphis nightlife and his later work. Included are reproductions of newly restored prints, executed specifically for the exhibition.

In the 1960s, when to most people serious photography meant the black and white kind, William Eggleston decided there was something in the raucous orange of a rooftop sign or the strident red of a painted ceiling or the faintly nauseating green of a shower stall that black and white didn't tell you about. And for that matter, there was also a world of opportunity in the most unassuming corners of reality - that rooftop, that ceiling, that shower stall. By combining those two intuitions he has produced a great many pictures that get under your skin.

 


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