William Eggleston, Self portrait, c. 1970
William Eggleston, Self portrait, c. 1970
William Eggleston: The Outlands
David Zwirner is pleased to present The Outlands, a selection of photographs by William Eggleston, the majority of which have never before been seen publicly, on view at the gallery’s 525 and 533 West 19th Street locations. This will be Eggleston’s fifth solo exhibition with David Zwirner since joining the gallery in 2016 and will coincide with the release of William Eggleston: The Outlands, Selected Works, a new publication by David Zwirner Books focusing on this series, with a foreword by William Eggleston III and new texts by the art historian Robert Slifkin and the author Rachel Kushner. The exhibition opens in advance of a major survey of Eggleston’s work, featuring several of the photographs from The Outlands, that will debut in January 2023 at C/O Berlin before traveling to Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid.
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Image: Installation View, William Eggleston: The Outlands, David Zwirner, New York, 2022
Dates
November 10—December 17, 2022
Opening Time
Tues—Sat 10am–6pm
Artist
“The Outlands series provides an opportunity to appreciate the breadth of Eggleston’s early color photography and recognize the larger themes and concerns in his work, which go beyond the initial debates they incited concerning their relationship with the so-called snapshot aesthetic and the place of color photography within the arts more generally.”
—Robert Slifkin, The Outlands: Selected Works , 2022
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/4 x 64 3/4 inches (114.9 x 164.5 cm)
Taken between 1970 and 1973, the images in The Outlands come from the same expansive photographic project from which Eggleston and the famed photography curator John Szarkowski selected the images for the artist’s groundbreaking 1976 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Installation view, Photographs by William Eggleston, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976
Installation view, Photographs by William Eggleston, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976
Installation view, Photographs by William Eggleston, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976
Installation view, Photographs by William Eggleston, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 1/8 inches (114.6 x 162.9 cm)
“Eggleston … shows us pictures of aunts and cousins and friends, of houses in the neighborhood and in neighboring neighborhoods, of local streets and side roads, local strangers, odd souvenirs, all of this appearing not at all as it might in a social document, but as it might in a diary, where the important meanings would be not public and general but private and esoteric.”
—John Szarkowski, William Eggleston’s Guide, 1976
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 64 3/4 x 45 1/8 inches (164.5 x 114.6 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 64 3/4 x 45 1/8 inches (164.5 x 114.6 cm)
A pioneer of color photography, Eggleston helped elevate the medium to the art form that it is recognized as today. At the time of his MoMA presentation, color photography was almost explicitly used by amateur and commercial photographers.
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
Installation view, William Eggleston: The Outlands, David Zwirner, New York, 2022
Installation view, William Eggleston: The Outlands, David Zwirner, New York, 2022
“Keeping in mind that Dad has always positioned himself as an artist whose instrument is a camera, his interests were more than simply photographic…. You can leave a picture of his and see the world anew. The view takes over. It becomes your world. His use of color enables his work to break free from time and place.”
—William Eggleston III, The Outlands: Selected Works , 2022
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 62 3/4 inches (114.6 x 159.4 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 63 3/4 x 45 inches (161.9 x 114.3 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 64 x 45 inches (162.6 x 114.3 cm)
“It is this awkwardly disengaged quality of the failed snapshot that Eggleston uses to supply his photographs with their tenseness and their ineluctable alienness. This ‘offness,’ to use Janet Malcolm’s word, rescues Eggleston’s best photographs from the vapid seductive glamour of photographic color, a glamour that in less intelligent hands transforms everything—especially the color photograph itself—into saccharine visual merchandise.”
—Lewis Baltz, Aperture, 1984
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
The formal sophistication of these works—the subtleties of color, surface, and light—is complemented by the way Eggleston captures the unique character of the American postwar visual and material landscape.
Images of gas stations, bars, burger joints, and drive-ins offer a sociological meditation on the typology of the built environment of the American South while also highlighting the presence and individuality of the people who inhabit these spaces.
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/8 inches (114.6 x 163.5 cm)
Installation view, William Eggleston: The Outlands, David Zwirner, New York, 2022
Installation view, William Eggleston: The Outlands, David Zwirner, New York, 2022
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 65 inches (114.6 x 165.1 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/4 inches (114.6 x 164.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 inches (114.6 x 162.6 cm)
“Like the unmodulated and markedly unagitated bands of pigment that characterize the modernist paintings of Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, Eggleston’s pictures are at once sensuous and impassive, imparting an unabashed beauty alongside what could be called a consciously refined blandness.”
—Robert Slifkin, The Outlands: Selected Works , 2022
Kenneth Noland, Sarah's Reach, acrylic on canvas, 1964. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Vincent Melzac Collection through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program, 1980.5.9
Kenneth Noland, Sarah's Reach, acrylic on canvas, 1964. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Vincent Melzac Collection through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program, 1980.5.9
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/4 inches (114.6 x 164.5 cm)
Some images recall rural colorist landscapes from the nineteenth century, while others have an almost subdued yet ponderous visual quality reminiscent of the paintings of Edward Hopper.
Edward Hopper, Gas, oil on canvas, 1940. The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Edward Hopper, Gas, oil on canvas, 1940. The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, oil on canvas, 1942. The Art Institute of Chicago
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, oil on canvas, 1942. The Art Institute of Chicago
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/4 x 65 inches (114.9 x 165.1 cm)
“We are seeing pictures made half a century ago…. Not only do they illustrate a distant era; Eggleston was, at the time, recording a world that was vanishing. You glimpse cars abandoned from another age altogether. The imagery is powerfully evocative and the Southern vistas are ripe for easy romanticizing, but the work is rooted in the specific.”
—Mark Holborn, The Outlands, 2021
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 1/8 inches (114.6 x 162.9 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 63 3/4 inches (114.6 x 161.9 cm)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1970-1973 (detail)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 61 inches (114.6 x 154.9 cm)
Installation view, William Eggleston: The Outlands, David Zwirner, New York, 2022
Installation view, William Eggleston: The Outlands, David Zwirner, New York, 2022
“[The photographs communicate] only if you study each one intently and using all of the intellect to decipher the image or observe every single thing that’s going on in it. I have to use the word decipher because, to view them on the surface is like considering them snapshots, which they are not. This is deeper.”
—William Eggleston, 2019
William Eggleston, c. 1970
William Eggleston, c. 1970
William Eggleston: The Outlands, Selected Works
Featuring nearly one hundred previously unseen images from the 1960s and 1970s, this publication features a fictional text by critically acclaimed author Rachel Kushner, new scholarship by Robert Slifkin that reframes the art-historical significance of Eggleston’s oeuvre, and a foreword by William Eggleston III offering insights into the process of selecting this series of images.
Inquire about works by William Eggleston
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 63 3/4 inches (114.6 x 161.9 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/4 inches (114.6 x 164.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 1/8 inches (114.6 x 162.9 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/4 x 64 3/4 inches (114.9 x 164.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/4 x 65 1/8 inches (114.9 x 165.4 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/8 inches (114.6 x 163.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 64 3/4 x 45 1/8 inches (164.5 x 114.6 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 63 3/4 x 45 inches (161.9 x 114.3 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 62 3/4 inches (114.6 x 159.4 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 61 inches (114.6 x 154.9 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/4 inches (114.6 x 164.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 1/8 inches (114.6 x 162.9 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 63 1/2 inches (114.6 x 161.3 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/4 x 63 1/2 inches (114.9 x 161.3 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/4 x 64 1/8 inches (114.9 x 162.9 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/4 x 65 inches (114.9 x 165.1 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 64 3/4 x 45 1/8 inches (164.5 x 114.6 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 64 x 45 inches (162.6 x 114.3 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/4 inches (114.6 x 164.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 65 inches (114.6 x 165.1 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 65 inches (114.6 x 165.1 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 1/8 inches (114.6 x 162.9 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/4 inches (114.6 x 164.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/4 inches (114.6 x 164.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/4 x 65 inches (114.9 x 165.1 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 3/4 inches (114.6 x 164.5 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 64 inches (114.6 x 162.6 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 45 1/8 x 65 inches (114.6 x 165.1 cm)
William Eggleston
Untitled, c. 1970-1973
Pigment print
Framed: 64 3/4 x 45 1/4 inches (164.5 x 114.9 cm)