American photographer William Eggleston (b. 1939, Memphis, Tennessee) is known for his neutral gaze and how he creates his art from commonplace subjects: a farmer’s muddy Ford truck, a red ceiling in a friend’s house, the contents of his own refrigerator. In his work, Eggleston photographed “democratically” – literally photographing the world around him. His large-format prints monumentalise everyday subjects, everything is equally important; every detail deserves attention.

As a young student, Eggleston discovered Henry-Cartier-Bresson’s photographs through the monograph 

, which led to his interest in photography. It was particularly Cartier-Bresson’s choice of motifs and angles that fascinated him; not the classical American landscape photography, but immediate surroundings and everyday objects. These became his motifs, represented with a degree of fortuity, which comes to light by his choice of perspectives and the coarse-grained snapshot aesthetic that characterizes his early works.

Parallel to his engagement with black-and-white photography in the 1960s, Eggleston experimented with color photography. He began to work on what was to become the series 

 in 1966, consisting of 2200 color photographs when completed in 1974.

It was primarily through color photography that Eggleston created his characteristic expression, which set the stage for the institutional recognition of the discipline. The exhibition of Eggleston’s color photographs at Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1976 was the museum’s first solo exhibition exclusively devoted to color photography. The book William Eggleston’s Guide, written by the curator John Szarkowski, accompanied the exhibition.

William Eggleston’s work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide including 

William Eggleston and the Color Tradition

 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (1999); 

 at Foundation Cartier, Paris (2001, travelled to Hayward Gallery, London); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002); 

, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2002, travelled to Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serravles, Portugal; National Museum for Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway; Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Albertina, Vienna, Austria; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas through 2005); and 

William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video 1961–2008

, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008, traveled to the Haus de Kunst, Munich; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Art Institute of Chicago through 2010).

William Eggleston

William Eggleston (b. 1939) is an American photographer. First photographing in black-and-white, Eggleston began experimenting in the late 1960s with colour transparency film, producing vivid prints through the dye transfer process. These techniques dominated his production in the late sixties and seventies, as the selected photographs at the exhibition illustrates.

Eggleston pioneered a new era in color photography with his extraordinary pictures of commonplace subjects: a farmer's muddy Ford truck, a red ceiling in a friend's house, the contents of his own refrigerator. Eggleston assumes a neutral gaze and creates his art from photographing the world around him "democratically." His large-format prints monumentalise everyday subjects so that everything seems to be of equal importance. Eggleston gives every detail its deserved attention.

Controversial but revolutionary Eggleston, was in 1976 the first photographer with a solo exhibition featuring colour photography at the Museum of Modern Art. Eggleston published his work extensively during his career. He lives and works in Memphis.

The exhibition is comprised of approximately forty dye transfer color photographs and c-prints from 1966-1974, and is organized in collaboration with Galleri Riis and the Eggleston Artistic Trust. All works are initially bought and owned by Peder Lund.

Works