Houset Houset and today we're looking at the work of William Egelston, a pioneering colour photographer who began in the late 1960s. Famously dismissed by an answer Adams, his work has gone on to achieve international recognition and it remains as divisive today as there ever has been. Hi there, I'm Alex and thank you for joining me today on the photographic eye. William Egelston is famous for his vibrant and lovely sumptuous prints in colour of the seeming mundane and an ordinary that surrounds us. As a young photographer in Memphis, he complained that there was nothing to photograph in the time because everything was just simply too ugly and his wife responded by saying that he should go out and photograph the ugly and he certainly made that hallmark of his career from the late 1960s. Now that Egelston is in his late 70s, he kind of, you know, obviously has a bit of a retrospective look across his career and a lot of people have considered that there must be hidden meaning and structure to his photographs and one of the things that I really love about Egelston is that he doesn't try to to overthink anything about his images and he just says look, they just happen and while he believes that there are things in them that people can discover, for the most part he's just happy with it being a photograph that he likes and doesn't really want to overanalyze anything. Of course the irony is that we're going to spend this video, so looking at Egelston's work and we're going to be sort of discussing it, whereas the truth is that I could just show you 10 minutes worth of his images and let you make your own decision about whether you like his work or not, whether it speaks to you. This is a really important thing to consider when looking at any photographers' work is ultimately, you know, do you like what you see? Does it move you? Does it inspire something within you? To try and like photography because it's got, you know, perfect composition or exceptional exposure or the focus is just so, I think the sun would remove us from the idea of what photography ultimately should be and that is a way of responding and seeing the world that is around us in a way that helps other people feel something. Looking back at the Egelston's work with modern eyes is hard to sort of see where the difference or where or the controversy comes with his photography. You sort of look at it with modern perspective and think well I like this or I don't. In the late 1970s, you know, or sort of late 1960s rather, the art photography world was dominated by black and white. Color was something that commercial photographers used and people making holiday snapshots used. It certainly wasn't for this serious photographer, you know, it certainly wasn't for somebody who was an art photographer. When Egelston had his solar exhibit at the museum of modern art, Antel Adams famously wrote to somebody and complained bitterly that the Egelston's work wasn't of any sort of consequence or any sort of substance because it was all in color. And of course, having this work in color and it was a first sort of solo, exclusively color exhibition, paved the way for a lot of photographers to feel that they were allowed to photograph in color. Some people had come before sort of a solider and some others. But this was the first time that really a photographer had mounted an exhibition or a maybe exhibition had been mounted on a photographer's work and the shackles have been taken off. The young Egelston was influenced to a degree by Robert Frank and Henry Cartier-Bresson and he met Cartier-Bresson a few years later who also added to the list of people who did not like Egelston's work. He recalls sitting at a table with Henry Cartier-Bresson at a function and Cartier-Bresson turning to him and saying, look, you do realise that all of your work is just BS because it's in color. And then you can imagine, that's quite a put down, but Egelston recalled that he just kind of went, well thank you ever so much, got up and went to go and party elsewhere, which it seems like of course a natural response for somebody who has made a career out of not really given a damn and just doing whatever feels to come naturally. And you see this throughout his photography, it is just all there, it's just a response to the world around him and I think the world will be a better place, or certainly the photography will be a place. If there were more people who managed to just go with their gut and photograph what's around them in a way that didn't try to have context and meaning and making a mission statement if you will. William Egelston is a great example of somebody who you could look at their photography and begin to train your eye. You know there are so many people who go, they think that the camera is the way of becoming a better photographer, but really the best tool that that a photographer has is their eyes. And when you look at somebody like Egelston, he is not crafting things from props and setups and what have you. He looks with his eyes and he brings the camera up to his face and he takes a photograph and somebody asks him, why do you process? Do you bring the camera up to your eye and then realize it's not a good photograph and then you see you put the camera down. And he's like, well no, I will bring the camera up to my eye because I've already taken the photograph with my eye and that's a really great way off. I think of looking at photography. Certainly if your interest in this kind of photography is not constantly seeing what it looks like through a viewfinder, but it's learning to see the world as a photographer, as somebody who can frame and compose an image with your eyes. Egelston's use of color is, in my opinion, absolutely beautiful. He has such a strong sense of how the color works together. And I think, you know, again, we talked about this kind of looking through the lens of history. At this remove, it's hard to, I'd imagine, really grasp the impact that Egelston's color photography had certainly in the early days when the world in which it inhabited, or which it was elbowing its way was a purely monochrome world where large black and white prints held sway. And here comes these young upstarts with their their brush and bold color prints, you know, and Egelston at the forefront. And it must have been a real shock and it must have been surprising in a way that we can't really grasp today. But if you look at these photographs, they still hold an impact for us. Even though there are images of the mundane and there are images of a world that does not exist anymore, you know, if you look at them, all this stuff, obviously, they have very much of their time. They still reach out from the page and they still grab us. And Egelston has said that even, you know, even today that, you know, he hasn't seen any decent reproductions of his prints because of the way that they were printed back in the late 60s and early 70s with the with the diosub process printing. The lesson that we can take from looking at Egelston's work is that doesn't matter that where we are or what confronts us as as photographers or even as non photographers, we can look at the world and see not beauty but but interest and and and things that are intriguing to us. So long as we just are happy to let go of our shackles about what we expect and what we believe should be the correct way of of looking at photographs. And that's what I love about Egelston's work that he he just reacts to what he sees and he photographs it and he says without comment, either you like this this photograph or you don't. And if you don't jog on, if you do fantastic, but that's all that there is to it. And don't try and scrape under the surface and find meanings that Egelston has somehow secretively injected into his work because it isn't there. Whatever you see in his work is what you have found within his photography. I think it's now more important than ever to to look at the work and the photography of people like William Egelston to see that the mundane can be elevated to art if we just allow it to be and of course art can be anything that we want it to be. A good place to discover more about William Egelston's work is his monochrome William Egelston's guide which is the accompaniment to the 1970s museum and modern art show. And that that's a really good sort of yes starting point. So if you are interested go and check it out that it's fully available. It's not out of print. It's really easy to find. Thanks ever so much for joining me here today on the photographic eye. And I really hope that you enjoyed this brief look at the photography of William Egelston. If you are new here and you haven't done so already please hit that subscribe button so you'll be make make sure that you know when all these videos are coming out in the future. If you've got a photographer who'd like to see featured here on this channel please drop me a line below and I'll look forward to hearing your input. Thanks again and I'll see you all again soon.