William Eggleston’s “Paris”
For photographers, the city of Paris constitutes a genre of its own, so perennially photogenic are its streets, skylines, storefronts and people.
William Eggleston, “The Father of Color Photography” and a lensman most associated with the American South offers a brilliant, unusual take on Paris today, with depictions that completely revitalize our sense of this most picturesque of cities. Eggleston spent three years working throughout different seasons, to craft images that reveal surprising and rarely-seen facets of the city.
Eggleston constructs with color–the brilliant yellow of a shop front, the intense blue of a street sign, the carnival colors on a merry-go-round–and of course with little gems of detail–plastic flowers in a shop window, a plastic bag or a woman’s supersaturated red shoes–locating effects that are simultaneously rustic and cosmopolitan, glamorous and gritty, everyday and extraordinary.
The first print appearance of this new work, Paris, a triumphant successor to Eugene Atget and Henri Cartier-Bresson, is published for Eggleston’s exhibition at Paris’ Fondation Cartier, and includes paintings juxtaposed with the photographs that inspired them.
