(slideshow, click image to advance)

As a photographer from the soul educated camp, I have allowed discovery to shift, tilt and reverse my horizons with free-flow and with natural grace.  I have found this suits my own (perhaps naive) learning style perfectly.  Even before I would call myself a photographer, I could classify photographs I enjoyed above others via that extra special ‘something’ (as opposed to mediocre photographs that would bore as lacking that extra special ‘something’).  Whatever this ‘something’ is I cannot say; this has continued to remain one of the much pondered mysteries in my life. 

My discovery of William Eggleston’s photography was, aside from raising the bar to what I considered this ‘something’ to be, a liberating experience fitting in with my own sensibilities perfectly.  Eggleston is not only a pioneer of colour photography, he is a rebel with an eye for compositions and subjects that sometimes appear direct from a movie still, or with some;  bringing a curious mystical sense of what it is to be in a time and a place – the raw essence of somewhere or someplace.

I’m a self-schooled photographer, learning the technicalities mainly from insipid, uninspiring photography magazines; the meandering soul-less articles on how to create the ‘perfect’ landscape photograph, or the ‘perfect’ portrait, etc etc.  Whilst ‘perfect’ is generally a very ‘nice’ path to walk along and believe in (along with the £££’s it takes to afford all the expensive kit to attain such photographic nirvana), perfectly nice just isn’t in me as an aesthetic.

Eggleston appeals because he is the man with a rock n’ roll soul, documenting this soul and experience without constraint.  At a time when most photographic purists where rejecting colour photography for the classical moodiness of mono, Eggleston relished the colour photograph with gusto and changed forever what photography is able to portend to be.

Additional Links:

www.egglestontrust.com – The Eggleston Trust

Below, a trailer for the (inspiring) documentary, ‘William Eggleston in the Real World.’

Until Soon..

Chris