William Eggleston

Over the course of nearly six decades, William Eggleston (b. 1939) has established a singular pictorial style that deftly combines vernacular subject matter with an innate and sophisticated understanding of color, form, and composition. His photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning. His 1976 solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by John Szarkowski, marked one of the first presentations of color photography at the museum. Although initially criticized for its unfamiliar approach, the show and its accompanying catalogue, William Eggleston's Guide, heralded an important moment in the medium's acceptance within the art-historical canon, and it solidified the artist's position as one of its foremost practitioners to this date. Eggleston's work continues to exert an influence on contemporary visual culture at large.

Eggleston was born in Memphis, Tennessee, where he continues to live today. Raised in Sumner, Mississippi, he attended Vanderbilt University, Nashville; Delta State College, Cleveland, Mississippi; and University of Mississippi, Oxford. In 2016, the artist joined David Zwirner. William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest, an exhibition of works drawn from the artist’s encyclopedic project, marked his first gallery solo show at the gallery’s New York location. William Eggleston: 2 1/4 was on view in 2019 at David Zwirner, London. In 2020, an exhibition at the gallery's Hong Kong location marked the artist's debut solo presentation in Greater China. The two-person exhibition, William Eggleston and John McCracken: True Stories, was on view at David Zwirner, New York, in 2021 and in 2022, William Eggleston: The Outlands was presented at the gallery's 19th Street location in New York.

Since the 1970s, Eggleston’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide, such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, in 1990; the Barbican Gallery, London, in 1992 (traveled to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland); documenta IX, Kassel, Germany, in 2002; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, in 2003 (traveled to Museu Serralves, Porto; Nasjonalmuseet – Museet for samtidskunst, Oslo; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Albertina, Vienna; and Dallas Museum of Art). In 2008, a major career-spanning survey, William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Videos 1961–2008, was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Haus der Kunst in Munich; it subsequently traveled to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among other institutions.

In 2023, a major survey of Eggleston’s work debuted at C/O Berlin before traveling to Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona. Other recent solo exhibitions have included those held at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (2009; traveled to Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg, Sweden); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2013 and 2018); and Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam (2017).

Eggleston received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1975 and has been the recipient of numerous notable awards, including the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement (2004) and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, République Française (Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic; 2016), among others. The Aperture Foundation honored Eggleston in 2016. Work by the artist is held in major museum collections worldwide.

Founded in 1992, the Eggleston Artistic Trust is dedicated to the representation and preservation of the work of William Eggleston and is directed by his sons Winston Eggleston and William Eggleston III. In 2019, the Eggleston Art Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study and preservation of Eggleston's work, was founded in the artist’s hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. The Foundation houses the Eggleston Archive and serves as a resource for research about the artist, his art, and his subjects.