William Eggleston: The Essential Illusions of Photography
Friday April 13th
The photography of William Eggleston is the essence of photography. Now what I mean by that is that William Eggleston’s photography is in form and content about photography. His photos are about seeing, they are about the observed world, but they are also about what photography does and the power it has. His photos deconstruct photography, refining and distilling it into its essential elements. A untitled photo of his taken from between 1971 and 1974 in Mississippi is a clear an utter explication of photography. Eggleston's Oeuvre as a whole does this, but here in just one photo Eggleston breaks down and discusses what photography does and why it’s important, elusive, and so attractive a medium.
The photo at first glance is very simple. There are few colors and lots of negative space, there are no figures, there is no action taking place, and in truth very little “content,” or at least so it seems. The photo is still, the photo is sharp, the photo is bathed in light. But it is all of these components together that make the photo so rich and so complicated. Like all other photos, this photo is deceiving - it is an illusion. Eggleston’s photo is of the signage of a tire store in Mississippi. His camera is pointed up towards the sky and a drawing of a tire, which fills the center of the frame. Around the sign, Eggleston describes a few other parts of the space. Telephone poles and telephone lines are just cut off on the right side of the frame, but are included enough to draw the eye deep into the conspicuous and vivid blue sky, which can in truth stand its own ground without the aid of the telephone poles to draw the eye. To the left, triangle 1 flags block and abstract the worded signage of the building. What each element of this photo does is explain not only its own function in the composition of the photograph, but it explains elements of what a photograph does; how it tricks the eye, how it engages the viewer, how it tells a story, and how it all comes together to make the illusion of a photograph.
Starting with - in some sense - the most conspicuous component of the photo, the color, Eggleston makes the most subtle of his points. The photo is essentially made up of four colors, not including black and white, which are included in all photographs because of the nature of light. The colors of the image are red, green, and blue, with just the slightest bit of yellow sneaking in. These colors, which constitute the frame, are the same colors that all photography is determined by and in essence, the same colors that the world, as scene through our eyes, is determined by. Just like the cones in our eyes, film is made to register Red, Green, and Blue light, and together Red, Green, and Blue create the illusion of all other colors. Now these colors are the colors referring to wavelengths of light that we interpret. In color theory, Red, Yellow, and Blue are the colors that are used to create all other colors. Combinations of the Primary colors (Red, Yellow, and Blue) are used in combination to produce all other hues. In this picture, Eggleston explains the whole process of color photography and color perception by breaking down the capturing of light of different colors and the printing of color, into its essential elements. White and black are used in the photo to remind us that of course color can’t exist without light to be reflected off of it. Much like the pointillism of Georges Seurat, Eggleston is concerned with color and light in an impressionistic way, 2 breaking down a moment into unconscious experience, into its essentials. Eggleston uses color for effect, not accuracy, because he recognizes the subjectivity of our experience of color, and that a photograph isn’t a fact; what the camera sees is not reality and he knows that. Eggleston, at the same time as being impressionistic, is being very systematic and precise in how he uses color and the science of color to achieve effect. This photo is just like Seurat’s paintings which are made up of thousands of points of only 3 basic colors and black, to together achieve the effect of creating a spectrum of color.
Next Eggleston comments on the geometry of photography, and photography’s most most fundamental, effective, and magical illusion, perspective; the transformation of 2-dimensional space into 3-dimensional space. Eggleston is witty and subversive. In Eggleston’s image, the main focal point is a 2-dimensional drawing of a tire that is poorly drawn in perspective, to give a Trompe-l’œil effect of dimensionality. It’s made to look as if instead of a sign being mounted, it is an actual tire. The image of the tire sits upon the corner of a flat, bright red cornice that slightly juts out to the right, that in turn sits upon a another flat cornice, this time a white one, that juts out to the left, and finally just below that, is the ceiling of the overhanging roof that acts as the awning of the shop. All these elements here are used to break down how 2 point perspective drawing works, Eggleston is in essence making a hand book of how to draw in perspective: The layered cornices act as orthogonals, and both extend to vanishing points out of frame. The proximity of the two points of convergence in the center however play with the sense of depth perspective by flattening space. Eggleston layers the two to flatten space 3 reminding us that the image is only in 2 dimensions, again explaining how the illusion works. The tire sign above serves the same function, and acts as a counterpoint to the lines of perspective.
Lastly, Eggleston reminds the viewer that photography is a different language, that it transcends words. Eggleston uses the flags in the left of the image to obscure the text on the building, yet we still know what function the building serves because of the image of the tire. Explicitly clear, Eggleston’s image allegorically stands for the power of all images. Images were used to communicate before language, image making is innate, and Eggleston knows that. By showing the obscured text in addition to the tire, Eggleston is reminding us of our innate visual sense and vocabulary. Although image making is innate because we learn to experience and read the world through visuals before we learn to understand language, photographic image making is different, and Eggleston knows this too. The photographer Edward Weston writes about the difference of the photographic image in his 1948 essay Seeing Photographically.
“Hence the photographer’s most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically––that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.”
What Weston is saying here, and what Eggleston is aware of, is that the camera is tricky because it changes the way we see the world before us. In painting or drawing or other non photographic forms of image making, the artist can create fully and originally the world of the image, where as the photographer has to deal with reality. A 35mm and a 50mm lens both distort the world differently and the photographer needs to figure out 4 how to use that distortion to say something with what is in front of them. Photographic seeing is about problem solving and this image of Eggleston’s of the tire shop is all about resolving problems and showing process of how the problem was solved - Eggleston’s photo is like a mathematical proof. His photo, much like his camera, is innately honest.
Another quote from Weston’s essay is revealing. The camera “enables [the photographer] to reveal the essence of what lies before his lens with such clear insight that the beholder may find the recreated image more real and comprehensible than the actual object.” This photo, because of its explication of the workings of photography and the photo itself, subverts the beholders agency over the photo, becoming beyond interpretation. Of course however, this is all in fact interpretation, and that’s the beauty of photography’s illusion. As Larry fink puts it, photography is “the beauty of the seeking of the truth of some matter,” and Eggleston’s photo does just that, it seeks truth - truthfully.
—Gus Aronson