CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/4/2017

Celebrating American Independence

“Eggleston’s photographs suggest the carnival of the fair,” Alexander Nemerov writes in William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest. “They do not literally show such places, but they give the feeling of the great parade, the frill and plume of a splendid but somehow forlorn happiness, in their store windows and Formica and spattered fenders… Eggleston does not make judgments. He neither praises nor condemns the bright American promise. But to say that he merely observes it is not right either. An element of deep feeling—a kind of permanent expression painted on his face—emerges unseen in his sidewalks and night tables and billboard stanchions.” We celebrate this fiercely independent American artist today.