ARTS William Eggleston: Democratic Camera
Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
Critics reacted with derision when William Eggleston’s photographs first appeared at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1976. It wasn’t just the use of colour that turned them off – though until then art photography was generally confined to black and white. They simply despised Eggleston’s seeming nonchalance, his willingness to turn just about anything, from a mucky green-tiled shower stall to the grey-blue insides of an empty oven, into art. “A mess,” one detractor sneered; another dismissed his work as “erratic and ramshackle”.
