1980
William Eggleston
Oil Cans in Muddy Puddle
William Eggleston
Oil Cans in Muddy Puddle, 1980
Aus Troubled Waters Portfolio
Dye-transfer print, 44 x 29 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
2001-012-001
Oil Cans in Muddy Puddle, 1980
Aus Troubled Waters Portfolio
Dye-transfer print, 44 x 29 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
2001-012-001
b. 1939 (Memphis, US), lives and works in Memphis, US
In the 1970s William Eggleston revolutionized photography. He gave meaning to banal, everyday objects—such as a dog in the shadows or oilcans in a puddle—by depicting them as auton-omous objects. An absolute novelty was that Eggleston shot in color, which until then had been reserved for advertisements and glossy magazines. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s notion of the “decisive moment” is extended to things in Eggleston’s images. John Szarkowski, Director of the Photography Division at the Museum of Modern Art, was instrumental in the artist’s breakthrough with the exhibition Color Photographs and the publication The Eggleston Guide in 1976.