[Leica] Eggleston and art photography

[Matthew Phillips <mlphilli@hsc.vcu.edu>]

Eggelston's work is often justified by placing him in the context of social
commentary and contemporary art history, but if you as a viewer don't have
a visceral connection with his images, all the intellictual discourse is
ultimately meaningless. There remain, however, two points that should be
considered:

First, one of the greatest strengths of photography (in general) and art
photography  (specifically) is the way it teaches us to see. Frequently,
expanding 'how way we see' means tossing aside preconception of beauty and
composition. While these are tools that allow us to organize our
understanding of the visual world, these devices can also construct a
facade that separates the viewer from a deeper truth. 

Second, it is important to consider an artist's body of work, rather than
just individual works. This becomes particularly conjent in the case of
documentary style works, where artists (photographers) work with serial
imagery to construct narrative description (consider not just Eggleston,
but also Winnogrand, Frank and Friedlander here). The images may be an
equivalent to a simple statement, but these statements bind to each other
to form paragraphs, then stories.

You can argue the relative merits of one of Eggleston's images over
another, but the body of his work over the past four decades have accrued
and irrefutably rich and epic description of the rural and suburban South,
while remaining true to his mature vision. It is comparable to the
landscape created in a collection of Carson McCullers' short stories.  

Regards,
M.Phillips