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By Doug Rickard William Eggleston is a “Southern” artist. Without a deeper explanation, this statement itself could mean a few things. If you look at the body of his work on the whole, the majority of it (almost all) is set within the Southern environs of the US… places like Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and Arkansas. Also, he was born in the “South” and still residing there. Surely, that makes him largely “Southern”. Additionally and importantly, you could look at his work as “Southern” from a standpoint of “feel”… the nuances, the point of view, the character. All of these things are accurate but it even goes deeper than that. William Eggleston can’t actually separate himself from his “South”. The “South” is embedded into him so deeply that it has become something of a stamp or a mark. This embedding is so pronounced that this “Southern” is in a sense woven in to his pictures, whatever the subjects are. 
Canyon Country, California, June, 1983 The Dreams of Some By Paul Loomis, December, 2012 It is written in the Torah that God’s name cannot be spoken. The name’s banned status signifies the indescribable power of a God so great that one cannot draw close, and there is a related concept present in Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects, something that is impossible to state directly but is definitely there. It is an unspeakable force, lurking invisibly, powerful, cultural, American. This speechless quality is important because American Prospects isn’t about politics like some of its influences – Robert Frank’s Americans comes to mind – it is more about ineffable ills, and patterns of the everyday we try to forget. It is about a country convinced of its independence and freedom, but that when photographed appears chained to a set of principles and dreams powerfully manifested in its architecture and in the lives its people have chosen to lead. 
By Paul Loomis, for ASX, August 2012 The photographs in “Photo Express: Tokyo” (Steidl, 2012) were taken in Tokyo within a single year by Keizo Kitajima, and looking at them is like leafing through his intricate memories. They are complex and celebratory, hopeless and certain and full of people with signatures of fate on their faces. This is a personal documentary invaded by a black energy. Dark expressions and rippling patterns emerge from leather jackets and cheap suits and sweaters. Backgrounds are bursting with texture, and even the sky over the city is like fabric. It pulses with the same vitality that moves through all of these photographs, a dark thing that brings just enough light with it to push crystalize silver bromide onto a page. The black and white medium is here twisted into a shouting, tortured filter for the eye. There are a few mundane scenes in Kitajima’s year, people smile at night or eat ice 
Have you wondered what is it like in Steidlville? Well, this is a personal insight, shot with a Canon 5DII, of how the printing goes and the faces behind the scenes. Shot in April 2012. 
Chromes. Photographs by William Eggleston. Steidl, 2011. Cat# ZE662 ISBN-13: 978-3869303116
ASX CHANNEL: WILLIAM EGGLESTON 
By Tim Davis For years, Tod Papageorge, the head of the Photography Department at the Yale University School of Art, would begin student critiques of color pictures with the question, “Why color?” Color was an aesthetic choice and Papageorge felt students needed to account for it. Photography, that neat Greek neologism given us by the English chemist Sir John Herschel (whose father discovered Uranus!)–meant silver prints, black and white ones, and Type C’s or Cibachromes represented as extroverted a stylistic decision as wearing white shoes after Labor Day. Of course now those values have reversed. Photographers making monochrome pictures are engaged in an antiquy practice that is going the way of platinum and palladium. Earlier this year Kodak announced that it was discontinuing the production of black and white silver paper, except for a small reserve for the “specialist.” So as a specialist practice has replaced a standard one, there must be darkrooms full of photographers teetering over the 
By Doug Rickard William Eggleston is a “Southern” artist. Without a deeper explanation, this statement itself could mean a few things. If you look at the body of his work on the whole, the majority of it (almost all) is set within the Southern environs of the US… places like Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and Arkansas. Also, he was born in the “South” and still residing there. Surely, that makes him “Southern”. Finally, you could look at his work as “Southern” from a standpoint of “feel”… the nuances, the point of view, the character. All of these things are accurate but it is more than that. William Eggleston can’t actually separate himself from his “South”. The “South” is embedded into him so deeply that it has become something of a stamp or a mark. This is so pronounced within him that his “Southern” is in a sense, placed on to the objects that he shows rather than the objects |
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