20 febbraio - 17 maggio 2009, München
Opening at Haus der Kunst, Prinzregentenstraße 1, München, the exhibition “William Eggleston - Democratic Camera. Photographs and Video 1961-2008″. William Eggleston’s early photographs were black and white. In the 1960s he began to photograph in colour and - almost single-handedly - heralded in the era of fine art colour photography. A solo show at the MoMA in 1976 made him famous. Eggleston’s snapshot aesthetic and his psychologising use of colour was still unusual at the time; in an annual review, the MoMA show was even called, “The most hated show of the year.” Today Eggleston enjoys a cult status among younger generations of photographers and film directors. The exhibition traces Eggleston’s artistic production from his early black and white photographs and his pioneering shift to colour photography to the present. […] Eggleston’s earliest images are raw, sketch-like black and white photographs of scenes in Sumner, Mississippi. They give the viewer the feeling that Eggleston simply casually selected the scene and accepted everything that took place in the defined framework. The result is photographs that integrate the incalculable in their composition, thus accepting coincidence. The belief that the uncontrollable quality of the moment enriches the fixed image was one that Eggleston shared with Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 1959 Eggleston discovered the Cartier-Bresson’s monograph “The Decisive Moment”, published in 1952; the book became Eggleston’s photographic point of reference in the years that followed. Eggleston’s central theme is found in the everyday life that surrounds him: supermarkets, which were built in urban outskirts; sidewalks, driveways, terraces, polished automobiles, set dinner tables, gas stations; middleclass homes and southern interiors; bars and their regulars. Everything that takes place in front of the camera is essentially worthy of being photographed, regardless of how irrelevant or trite it may seem. A stuffed freezer or shoes underneath a bed - Eggleston directs his ‘democratic’ gaze towards everything and treats it all with the same attention. […] William Eggleston, by contrast, used various types of cameras, from small and mid-sized formats to large ones. Following his shift to colour photography, he also experimented with different methods of production, from drugstore and C-prints to dye transfer printing. His discovery of dye transfer printing became decisive for his artistic course. This was a technique developed by Kodak in the 1940s in which the motif was transferred onto a paper surface from three successive negatives. The result was a relatively permanent colour print in which the individual colours could be altered or intensified without influencing the complimentary colours. Eggleston was thus able to orchestrate the individual elements of the colour scheme. […] In this way, the warm afternoon light lent the portrait of a supermarket employee a conciliatory touch while it simultaneously cast a sobering glance on the American dream. […] Info: tel +49 89 21127115 fax +49 89 21127157 e-mail: presse@hausderkunst.de; www.hausderkunst.de