Los Alamos is a collection of images taken by William Eggleston
between 1965 and 1974 as he traveled through Southern and Western America. The book, first published in 2003 to
accompany an exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Germany, presents a selection
of prints from a collection of some 2,200 negatives produced by Eggleston
during this period.
Los Alamos provides us with further evidence of Eggleston
innate attentiveness in capturing the life of the ordinary. He photographed everyday life, objects and
environments, recording them in their richness and unadorned states.
These images of life never feel like they are studies but
more like extended glances into the familiar.
The mundane and ordinary subject matter make the images accessible and
understandable. We’ve seen these things,
these people before but maybe not like this.
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| Untitled, 1965 |
This accessibility is further enhanced by the lack of depth
and narrow perspective used by Eggleston.
He provides us with a human viewpoint. They are glimpses that we may have
made ourselves but now we question whether we really ever saw what was
there. He reminds us that the ordinary
is not so ordinary and that there is much vibrancy in the everyday.
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| Untitled, 1971 |
It is this vibrancy and intensity that sets these images
apart. And it is Eggleston’s use of
colour that achieves this. Eggleston used
colour at a time when it was only considered suitable for amateur photos or glossy
commercial advertisements. It was at a time when "professional"
photographers only took pictures in black-and-white.
Black & White are the colours of photography – Robert
Frank
Colour photography allowed Eggleston to use and control
colour like a painter may. Photography,
for him, was always an extension of his love for the visual arts. In 1973 Eggleston had discovered the now
out-dated dye-transfer process. It was a
process predominantly used in the advertising industry during the 50s and 60s.
The process resulted in giving specific colour’s enhanced saturation and
increased intensity. With colour photography and his new found process Eggleston now
had the tools to bring the ordinary and mundane to life.
He shoots like a shutterbug and executes like a
painter – Peter Schjeldahl
Eggleston draws us into his frames with his focused,
targeted use of primary colour. We are
never left in doubt what or whom the subject of the photo is.
 |
| Untitled [and] Untitled |
The sky is used often like a curtain backdrop helping to contrast
the show in front. The intensity of the
blue providing us with a frame for his subject matter.
 |
| Untitled, 1971 |
The intensity of Eggleton’s colours are rarely matched by
the intensity of life underneath. There
are always signs of deterioration of wear and tear, whether it is a car, a sign,
a face. We are reminded of the fragility
of ordinary life. There are always
cracks on the surface but maybe we sometime don’t notice them. Eggleston ensures that we never bore of the
mundane and the ordinary and reminds us that is such vibrancy and intensity to
what we see everyday.
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| Untitled, 1965-1968 |
