New William Eggleston photos
Considering he is the Guardian’s art critic, Adrian Searle’s accompanying piece is poor:
I think some people photograph things the better to see what they look like. Photographs crop and contain reality, but they are as much about focus as the things they represent. Look, say Eggleston’s photographs, just look. Juergen Teller recently told me that he was with Eggleston somewhere, sitting on a bench, and the American photographer just raised his camera and shot a picture of a nearby rubbish bin. Teller, who had pretty much the same camera and was sitting at Eggleston’s side, cheekily took a picture of the same subject. Eggleston’s picture was great, Teller told me, his own picture somehow lifeless and ordinary.
The first sentence is an unabashed steal from the oft-quoted Garry Winogrand: “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.”
And perhaps Juergen Teller did tell Adrian Searle that story about William Eggleston, but then Teller tells the exact anecdote in Alan Yentob’s BBC documentary (Imagine: The Colourful Mr Eggleston) which went out late last year. Maybe Searle didn’t watch it, or maybe he thinks his readers didn’t.
