Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/16
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on 16/2/00 4:36 pm, Mike Johnston at michaeljohnston@ameritech.net wrote:
> Tell you what. Go get at least three of Bill Eggleston's books. Study
> them carefully. Then go see if you can make six photographs that you
> think are in his style or that look like shots of his.
>
> You're going to see it's not so easy, but you'll also get halfway to
> understanding what he's all about.
Right!
Let's just get some stuff out of the way. Let's assume that
- -- Eggleston isn't a charlatan
- -- That the people who praise him aren't stupid or blind
- -- That the people who criticise him aren't stupid or blind
Now, why does he divide people, and why is he (if he is) 'important'?
IMHO, it's because he's reworking the rules of composition and what makes an
interesting photography... just as Lartigue, HCB, Frank, Winogrand etc did.
When Frank's THE AMERICANS was published, it was panned almost universally.
Looking at it now, you can't imagine why intelligent people couldn't 'see'
it, but they clearly didn't. It was negative, they said. Badly printed. Poor
quality. Meaningless.
Time after time, I return to Winogrand's insistence that 'anything can be a
photograph'.
So people who hate Eggleston find that he violates their own particular
criteria for what makes an interesting or beautiful or moving or meaningful
photograph. And I can completely understand that.
But I suspect that those who love him love him for the same reason.
I am in the latter camp because I feel that aesthetic criteria are not
static, and I want mine to be challenged. And it is the job of the artist to
challenge them. This is where 'art' photography tends to separate from PJ or
any other 'message' oriented genre.
But the conundrum is this: any self-described 'art' photographer immediately
risks toppling into pretension. I have no time for them personally. The
*great* photographers manage to engage with the real world *and* their
medium, redefining a vision in the process.
Therefore, to me, the argument here should not be between Walker Evans and
Eggleston, between whom it seems to me there are fundamental and striking
similarities, (or even HCB and Eggleston, both rich) -- but between
Eggleston and Geddes.
Geddes work, to me, violates no rules of conventional aesthetics. It's
technically terrific, extremely popular, and has probably made a lot of
people want to photograph their children.
But, and this is my $0.02, she is simply not engaged with the medium or the
subject to any meaningful extent. It looks like it's a tool to her. Turn the
handle, and money comes out.
Eggleston is clearly, to me, engaged with both the medium and the real
world. That's why I look at his photographs. They teach me something.
That curve in the road, for example, teaches me that a curve in the road
photographed like that is interesting. Haunting, even. Once you've seen it,
you're going to think twice about photographing a landscape in the way you
photographed it before (at least, I am). No further justification is needed.
- --
John Brownlow
photos: http://www.pinkheadedbug.com
music: http://www.jukebox.demon.co.uk