Style - Emily Hannak

William Eggleston was born in Tennessee and raised in Mississippi, making him as American as you could get. His work reflects this, often featuring classic Americana artifacts and retro fashion, even if that was not his intention. He wanted to capture the beauty in the mundane, and photographed ordinary objects and scenes that others may overlook. His subjects were often discarded or damaged things that he found interesting. While this makes up a majority of his work, he also would take images of people, some of them being black and white portraits, as seen in his publication The Democratic Camera. The scenic and object based images often feature unique lines and shapes to captivate the viewer into looking deeper to see what William sees. He also uses a lot of shadows to cast unique shapes to enhance the image, or does the opposite by using bright natural light to highlight an object or a person. His human-based work is often much softer than his object-based; the women he photographs are always in a soft, beautiful light to highlight their features and their dresses. Their wardrobe and makeup are also distinctly vintage, again carrying the unique Americana style. He used both color and black and white film using a Fuji camera, and also used a view camera on wet plates in his earlier work.