CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/8/2016

William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest… reconfiguring the way we experience the world

"Though too frequently we see photographs that look like other photographs, occasionally a body of work surfaces for which there are almost no points of reference. The pictures then reconfigure the way we experience the world. The Democratic Forest is such a body. Its only point of photographic reference is its author's own work. Its epic nature—the fruit of unwavering perseverance—suggests a fiction. It portrays a land in transition, where the old and the new collide. There is a terminal air about the endeavor. In hindsight we see it as a world that is coming to a close, not as a brave new beginning. The work may indeed be the climax of the pre-digital age—the last great foray with film. Viewed in its fullest form thirty years after the pictures were made, The Democratic Forest is both descriptive, drawing on views of a now vanished America, and abstract. Its power is irreversible. You can't recover your innocence. Eggleston changes your view forever." –Mark Holborn