William Eggleston Portraits

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Untitled, 1969-70 (the artist’s uncle, Adyn Schuyler Senior, with assistant and driver, Jasper Staples, in Cassidy Bayou, Sumner, Mississippi) William Eggleston, a cor Americana, Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [catalogue] (solo exhibition) The exhibition comprises examples from the Albertina’s rich photographic holdings. Since the foundation of its Department of Photography in 1999, the Albertina has succeeded in compiling one of the most prominent collections of American photography around the globe.

Surface Matters, Mutina for Art, Fiorano Modenese, Italy 2017 William Eggleston Selected Exhibitions 2017: Shrines to Speed: Art and the Automobile, From the Postwar to the Postmodern, Leila Heller Gallery, New York William Eggleston: American: 1939, Memphis, Tennessee". San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Accessed 22 March 2018. William Eggleston: Selections from the Wilson Centre for Photography: Mar 26 – Aug 21, 2016". Portland Art Museum. Accessed 31 March 2017 William Eggleston wrote far better than most writers write. He wrote without words through his portraits as fleeting and resonant as a Carver story. Currently on display in The National Portrait Gallery is one of his most expansive exhibitions of 100 works dating from the 1960s to the present day.

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What Eggleston aims to achieve with this large and expanding body of work – there are rumours of 1.5m negatives – is the most tantalising mystery about him. Though rooted in place (the overwhelming majority of his images are captured in Memphis or the flatlands towards the Mississippi Delta), they are too fragmented to map a certifiable location. Eggleston has repeatedly denied that he is interested in politics, and has disavowed being part of a southern artistic school. And although his pictures are documentary – as all photography is documentarian – they have the aura of a world half-invented, or imagined. Called on for his explanation, he once said: “I think of them as parts of a novel I’m doing.” In 1970, Eggleston's friend William Christenberry introduced him to Walter Hopps, director of Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery. Hopps later reported being "stunned" by Eggleston's work: "I had never seen anything like it." Following the death of his wife, Rosa, in 2015, Eggleston reluctantly vacated the family home for this large apartment in a well-heeled residential “retirement community”. Alongside the piano stands a state-of-the-art hi-fi system and some huge speakers. “One of the advantages of being here is that all the neighbours are deaf. I can play the piano loudly all night if I want to. I often do.”

William Eggleston: Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London [itinerary: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne] [catalogue] (solo exhibition) Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS), Royal Photographic Society, London [4]Best known for his saturated, dreamlike visions of life in the American south, Eggleston is considered one of the first photographers to establish color photography as a respected art form. Eggleston also worked with filmmakers, photographing the set of John Huston's film Annie (1982) and documenting the making of David Byrne's film True Stories (1986). Whether Eggleston is photographing the well-known ( Joe Strummer with a Coke, Dennis Hopper driving) or a busboy with a tray of dirty plates, kids at a fence, his uncle and his driver, his one-time lover Viva sitting in the dirt and staring into the distance, he treats them all the same, devouring that sudden confrontation and the particularity of atmosphere and tension, their sometimes skittish alertness to the camera and their self-absorption. It is all there. What a great show. Lindgren, Carl Edwin. (1993 Summer). "Ancient and modern". Review of Ancient and Modern by William Eggleston. Number, Volume 19:20–21. Four Portfolios, Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Memphis, USA (solo) 1994 From Graceland to Wasteland, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, USA (solo) 1992 Ancient and Modern, Barbican Gallery, London, England (solo)