Fascinating. He seems to be another irascible character. I’m still not sure how much I like his work, although I must say that it seems to be growing on me. I could see that he deserves some credit for popularizing color photography, but at first his pictures seems to me to be too snapshot like. As I spend more time looking at them though I’m seeing something else: pictures of the mundane somehow brought to life. At little bit like the pictures by Eugene Atget. At first they just seem like ordinary pictures of buildings, parks etc. in old Paris, but as you look at them you realize that there’s more to it than that. I’ve tried to take pictures like Atget and I can’t. Although Eggleston’s pictures look like simple snapshots I suspect that I couldn’t take pictures like his either. I have a feeling that as I continue to look at this work I’ll get to like it more and more.
Eric Kim has an interesting take on Eggleston in 10 lessons William Eggleston taught me about street photography.