William Eggleston's Guide
"William Eggleston was born in 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee. He took his first black-and-white photographs at age 18 and soon became serious about photography, though he never studied it formally. His first color work was shot in 1964 in color negative film, but in the late 60s he began to use color slides; it was some of those slides that he brought with him to New York in 1967, when he met Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and John Szarkowski. It was Szarkowski who curated Eggleston's landmark 1976 solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York--a breakthrough in the perception of color photography as a serious form of fine art. The recipient of the 1998 Hasselblad Award, Eggleston's work was most recently seen in Documenta11 and in a major retrospective at the Fondation Cartier in Paris."John Szarkowskiis director emeritus of the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. As director of the department from 1962 through 1991, he oversaw the presentation of more than 100 exhibitions. He also oversaw the publication of more than 30 books and catalogues, the inauguration of the Museum's first photography collection galleries in 1964 and their expansion in 1984 and the establishment of endowments to support the department's programs. Throughout his tenure, he supervised the development of the collection, which now includes more than 25,000 works spanning the history of photography. Szarkowski was born in Ashland, Wisconsin in 1925.