If an artist were to admit that he was uncertain as to what part of the content of his work asnwered to life and what part to art, and was perhaps even uncertain as to precisely where the bounday between them lay, we would probably consider him incompetent. -John Szarkowski

The latest addition to the Preston Photographic Club’s library has been polarizing, perhaps like all great art should be.

By the 1970s, colour was everywhere, but photography was still largely in black and white. Photographers such as Walker Evans declared colour photography “vulgar” and Robert Frank insisted that “black and white are the colours of photography.” Then came William Eggleston.

William Eggleston’s Guide is the accompanying book to his 1976 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). Photographers such as Paul Outerbridge, Eliot Porter, and Stephen Shore had worked in colour, but Eggleston’s exhibit was a watershed moment in the history of colour photography. His was the first one-man exhibition and it marked the acceptance of colour photography by an important institution (MoMA). As a result, Eggleston ushered in a new era of colour photography.

Eggleston’s work is characterized by its ordinary subject matter – an incomplete jigsaw puzzle on a folding table in the lounge room, discarded plastic bottles, a child’s tricycle, the interior of a kitchen oven, a jacket hanging on the wall. Whereas many photographers pursue the beautiful and the extraordinary moments in life, Eggleston’s seemed to be interested in random, ordinary, banal, boring stuff. His camera was democratic and, to Eggleston, a sunset was no more beautiful than a hair dryer. The photographs that appear in William Eggleston’s Guide were largely taken in Tennessee and Mississippi in the southern United States, these areas are not exactly known for glitz and glamour.

Eggleston found beauty in the mundane and he took colour photography out of the hands of fashion magazines and turned it into an expression of the every day. We take colour photography for granted now, but Eggleston’s 1976 exhibition was shocking and radical. Whether you love him, hate him or find yourself indifferent to him, Eggleston is one of the great pioneers of colour photography.

For more information about William Eggleston, please visit his website.

William Eggleston’s Guide is now available to club members. Please see our librarian Michael Jones to check it out. And a big thank you to Michael for adding this important book to our wonderful library.