WILLIAM EGGLESTON

Born on July 27, 1939, William Eggleston is one of the most influential photographers of the latter half of the 20th century. His portraits and landscapes of the American South reframed the history of the medium and its relationship to colour photography. “I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography,” Eggleston explained. “Not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it.”

 One critic called Eggleston “totally boring and perfectly banal.” He was, of course, completely correct, in a new topographics style Eggleston uses colour to present the ordinary and familiar- something I am interested in attempting to succeed in.

HENRY WESSEL JR

Snapshots capturing everyday life and subjects are a major form of vernacular photography, Henry Wessel Jr made “obdurately spare and often wry black-and-white pictures of vernacular scenes in the American West” Exploring the territory where nature and culture meet, Wessel’s deadpan pictures share the spontaneity and authenticity of snapshots, combining disarming frankness with irreverent humour. His low-key style matches the modest nature of his subject matter: he has found an inexhaustible richness in the aesthetics of the everyday, turning the least monumental of subjects into a kind of personal poetry.

Contrasting to Eggleston’s work which uses a large mix of colours, I also want to experiment with black and white images in the style of Wessel.

MY MOODBOARD

I would like my final outcomes to be in colour and monotone in the style of documentary photography.