At the Opening of William Eggleston’s New York Exhibition

In November, the David Zwirner Gallery hosted "The Outlands," a highly anticipated show of the photographer’s classic works, and the author of our November cover story on Eggleston was at the scene.

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Last month’s Memphis magazine cover story on William Eggleston was written in anticipation of a major new exhibition of his work at New York’s David Zwirner Gallery. As it turned out, both your far-flung correspondent and photographer Justin Fox Burks were able to be in New York for the opening on November 10th, and, for both of us, the revelation of seeing the large-format prints in person was stunning.

Burks, a longtime fan of the photographer's work, was floored by the experience. “This has been one of the most thrilling things I’ve ever gotten to do,” he said. “And I’ve almost been killed by a tiger.”

While we both were familiar with published collections of Eggleston's artwork, last month’s opening offered the combination of seeing many previously unreleased works in prints that could stretch five feet across. “Just seeing his work printed at this size is really incredible.,” said Burks. “You usually see them in books, but here you can really get lost in it. Like the detail of the red room in Greenwood, which is where I was born, is just so cool to see. ‘God’ is spray painted on the wall. And it's so cool to be able to see all these ‘outtakes’ — to see the ones that originally ended up on the cutting room floor be given their due. I’m actually a little shaken up, to be honest. It’s like seeing the Rolling Stones or something.”

“Eggleston talks about this idea of trying to create images from a new perspective, or a child’s perspective. Perspectives that one doesn’t anticipate an operator of a camera having. There’s something very defamiliarizing about many of these images.” — Robert Slifkin, author of the introduction to the book accompanying the exhibition

Inside, before the opening proper began, members of the press were treated to a walk-through led by William Eggleston III, the photographer’s son, and Robert Slifkin, an associate professor of fine arts at New York Univeristy who penned an introductory essay for The Outlands: Selected Works, the book accompanying the Zwirner exhibition.

Together, the pair led observers through the various rooms, stopping at notable images along the way. At one image of a station wagon, Slifkin drew our attention to “the incredible asphalt, which takes up half of the composition. One has to imagine Eggleston on his knees or on his belly, putting his camera on the ground to get this perspective. Which is, in one way, just a way of centering the image, but it gives it a very unnerving, at once stately and unseemly, perspective. Moreover, it bifurcates the composition, just as the car itself bifurcates the composition.”

For Slifkin, this echoed the artist’s general approach to his subjects. “Eggleston talks about this idea of trying to create images from a new perspective, or a child’s perspective,” he noted. “Perspectives that one doesn’t anticipate an operator of a camera having. There’s something very defamiliarizing about many of these images.”

Yet some elements of the South represented in the works were all too familiar in today’s context. As Slifkin noted, “One of the things that really became potent, seeing these in larger formats, were the incredible details. I was drawn to the bumper sticker on this car. It says, ‘Register Communists, not firearms.’ For 1966 Southern suburbia, that’s just about right. The Cold War era ... Eggleston seems very attuned to a world changing at this crucial moment; a world of suburbanization and standardization occurring alongside — but still in — the largely rural South.”

But our time for such insights was limited: The doors were about to be flung wide so the public opening could begin. In closing, Slifkin observed, “One of the things you’ll notice throughout this body of work is the tendency to find ways of connecting the sky and the earth. Often, Eggleston will find reflections in small puddles, or in the swimming pool, where the trees are visible in the reflection. And to me, this is a fundamentally Romantic trope, as a way of bringing the celestial realm down to the terrestrial realm.

The next day’s constant drizzle and occasional downpours did not dampen the spirits of still more Eggleston fans, who lined up halfway down the block outside the Zwirner Gallery to have copies of The Outlands: Selected Works signed by the man himself.

“For me, it has to do with the way these photographs are managing different temporalities,” he continues. “There's time based on the diurnal rhythms of nature, and the slow vernacular time of buildings like this post office, and then these more modern spaces. Roland Barthes, the great writer, said, ‘Cameras are clocks for seeing.’ There's something about the camera that stops time. And these works contain a very complex meditation on time. And not just human time, which seems to be moving towards this greater standardization and predictability through modular, mass cultural forms, but also the time of nature. And these works are always putting these times next to each other.”

Soon after that, a formidable crowd of people rushed in to view the exhibit. In addition to the Eggleston family, more than a few Memphians were present, including The Hold Steady’s guitarist, Steve Selvidge, and his wife, documentary producer Joann Self Selvidge. Also present was a Nashville resident who’s somewhat of an honorary Memphian by virtue of his work as a DJ at WYXR FM: Wilco’s Pat Sansone. Professional DJ and music supervisor Alix Brown, who has close ties to Memphis, also attended with her partner, filmmaker Michele Civetta.

After a few hours of taking in the artwork, during which time the elder Eggleston sat in a side office and received visitors, a select cross section of the crowd made their way to the nearby Hotel Chelsea. A historic building that served as a home to many poets, artists, and musicians over the past century and a half, including Dylan Thomas, Delmore Schwartz, William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen, the Chelsea has recently been renovated into a high-end establishment. Art lovers gathered around the bar or the piano, as a few made their way to visit with Eggleston in the back corner.

The next day’s constant drizzle and occasional downpours did not dampen the spirits of still more Eggleston fans, who lined up halfway down the block outside the Zwirner Gallery to have copies of The Outlands: Selected Works signed by the man himself. The phalanx of umbrellas stretching down  West 19th Street bore silent testimony to the importance of Eggleston's work to many. Some, like Memphis-raised photographer Ebet Roberts and New York photographer Bob Krasner, even accepted a bit of rain damage to their signed books as the price of seeing their hero in person.