Eggleston in the Real World, Reviewed
This week I watched William Eggleston in the Real World, Michael Almereyda's 2005 documentary on the adored father of color photography. In 1976 MOMA exhibited William Eggleston's Guide, its very first solo show of color photographs. Received with scorn, the Guide shared photographs of intimate portraits, isolated landscapes and banal objects. They come together to create an off-tilt Kodachrome world reflective of the South at the time.
Much of the documentary follows Eggleston, and his son Winston, as they mull through a rural Kentucky town during winter. The cameraman takes a back seat, unobtrusively watching Eggleston snap away at this or that. Of course we get to see the notorious drunk in high form. Yet the evenings with friends and his drunken musings are touching.
Eggleston is a man of few words, but there is a revealing conversation as the film (and Almereyda's grueling art meditations) nears an end. Eggleston is urged to support Almereyda's intellectualizing of his photographs, but instead laconically offers "photographs have nothing to do with words...you can love art and appreciate art but you can't really talk about it, it doesn't make any sense."
In Almereyda's project, direction feels intimate but disjointed and overly serious considering the casual, humorous quality of the subject and his work. Ultimately, The Real World provides the opportunity to sift through the narrative pretense and catch a glimpse of the illusive Eggleston, well, in the real world.
SUMMER MISSISSIPPI (AS SEEN IN THE GUIDE)
AS SEEN IN 5x7
GREENWOOD MISSISSIPPI, 1971 (AS SEEN IN DEMOCRATIC CAMERA)
Watch William Eggleston in the Real World here
Stop by Hennessey and Ingalls to check out The Guide, 5x7, and Democratic Camera
Get ready for William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 at LACMA fall 2010
