William Eggleston 0 comments

Bobby Rogers

To me it seems that the pictures reproduced here are about the photographer’s home, about his place, in both important meanings of that word.
          —John Szarkowski, Introduction to William Eggleston’s Guide

I’m sure I’m wrong about him, but it’s always seemed like slumming to me, those lovely color
          photographs—quickly seen
shots of broken grave monuments and all manner of sun-scoured refuse, peeling billboards,
          delicately corroding
service station signs and boxcars parked on the siding, copper-tipped clouds against an
          indifferent sky—process prints
as lurid as circus posters. I wish they didn’t seem so damn familiar. All of life is slumming,
          even if you don’t believe
in anything more than method: take just one shot of each view, but condition your eye to
          capture countless views.

Everyone in Memphis can tell you Eggleston’s been barred from the Lamplighter Lounge, one
          of those beer joints
over on Madison. You know the kind of place—fifty-cent pool table, Rock-ola jukebox stuffed
          with Otis Redding sides,
a Pabst Blue Ribbon clock running fifteen minutes fast. How is your behavior so bad you can’t
          darken the door
of a dive like that? Even a town as rough as this one should be handled with manners and
          grace. There’s something to look at
in the saddest room. Beauty is best when it’s accidental. I was brought up to act polite, and
          maybe I’m too fearful of getting barred

from the smoky rooms of Memphis, but it breaks my heart to be shut out of even the shabbiest
          place. How empty
if the only thing left to look at is your own looking in this world so mysteriously encoded into
          shape and color, where even a tawdry streetscape
is built of parts we’ve only happened upon and had no hand in making. Look at the assurance
          of beautiful things, how they pose
and preen and covet our looking. Such need is what renders a thing uncomely. We should
          seek the repose of the unlooked at
because nothing’s ever beautiful that’s not in some measure caught unawares. And rust, no
          matter what else it is, is red.