Untitled (Near Morton, Mississippi)

ca. 1972, printed 1986

Not on view

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, Eggleston is known for his enormously influential color photographs of the American South. He began making black-and-white photographs in 1959, inspired by the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s celebrated book The Decisive Moment. Eggleston turned to color in the late 1960s, photographing mundane subjects—parked cars, neon signs, the contents of his refrigerator—in a deceptively simple, snapshot-like style. His sensibility, like that of the writer and fellow Southerner William Faulkner, is both lyrical and lurid. Eggleston was one of the first noncommercial photographers to exploit the deeply saturated colors of the dye-transfer printing process, which allowed him to render the tawdry beauty of the South with a dreamlike intensity.

Artwork Details

Title: Untitled (Near Morton, Mississippi)
Artist: William Eggleston (American, born Memphis, Tennessee, 1939)
Date: ca. 1972, printed 1986
Medium: Dye transfer print
Dimensions: Image: 28.8 x 43.4 cm (11 5/16 x 17 1/16 in.)
Sheet: 45.7 x 58.4 cm (18 x 23 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchase, Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and Jennifer and Philip Maritz Gift, 2012
Object Number: 2012.292
Rights and Reproduction: © Eggleston Artistic Trust
Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

By William Eggleston

In the same medium

From the same time and place

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Untitled (Young Man Entering Diner, Memphis, Tennessee)

William Eggleston

1968

Troubled Waters, William Eggleston American, Dye transfer prints — Troubled Waters
William Eggleston
1980

Untitled (Sumner, Mississippi, Cassidy Bayou in Background), William Eggleston American, Dye transfer print — Untitled (Sumner, Mississippi, Cassidy Bayou in Background)
William Eggleston
1971, printed 1999

Untitled (Memphis), William Eggleston American, Dye transfer print — Untitled (Memphis)
William Eggleston
ca. 1972, printed 1986

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