Newsweek Culture

Photos: Gallery of William Eggleston's Photographs

A shooter who won his war against the obvious

Four decades ago, William Eggleston almost singlehandedly made color respectable in the world of art photography. Since then he hasn't stood still, and we're still catching up. "I am at war with the obvious," he once declared. Judging by the evidence in the retrospective of his work on display at New York's Whitney Museum (and beautifully reproduced in the book accompanying the show, William Eggleston: Democratic Camera), he is at war with cliches. Put another way, he shoots perfectly ordinary sights, but somehow always manages to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Anything can be a picture, Eggleston seems to imply. Well, it can if he takes it.