Untitled 1978

William Eggleston made this dye transfer print, titled 'Untitled', in the style that came to be known as 'snapshot aesthetic'. Eggleston took up colour photography at a time when the art world establishment still considered it vulgar, suitable only for advertising. But here, in the American South, he saw a chance to record something about the vernacular landscape. The image presents a laconic view of the scene. He's focusing on something ordinary, trees, and showing them in a straightforward, unaffected style. He has a sharp eye for the specific details of a place, the way light falls on the trees. One could dig into the archives of the time and place, and compare this image to more conventional depictions of the South, in order to gauge his critical stance toward the values of his society. This, and countless other images, suggest that the role of the artist is to question the world around him, no matter how mundane it might appear.