Michael Glover, art critic, The Independent: 'You seem to have both loved and loathed the American landscape. How much pain has the holding of such contradictory impulses caused you?'William Eggleston: 'I don't remember loathing any of it.'
WIlliam Eggleston bought his first camera , a Canon Rangefinder, in 1957, when he was inspired by Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson. He began experimenting in colour in 1965, by the late 1960's it was his dominant medium. His exhibition of colour photography in 1976 at the MoMA marked the acceptance of the medium, and it's argued that the likes of Martin Parr, using the same high colour saturation as Eggleston, followed in his footsteps, was allowed the use of colour photography as an art form. In 1976 Eggleton's photos were criticised as banal, boring: there was no message, barely any subject. It took some decades for his influence to be absorbed and understood, but this year he was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award at the Sony World Photography Awards. The Tate Modern has opened a permanent exhibition of his work (he was represented in their 'Cruel and Tender' photography exhibition which I saw 2003).
These last two from Martin Parr's Last Parking Space series would surely have been unthinkable without Eggleston.
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