Eggleston’s “Democratic Camera” in Washington, DC, through Sept 20
by Todd ~ August 28th, 2009. Filed under: Color photography, Washington DC.If you missed the Eggleston retrospective “Democratic Camera” while it was at the Whitney earlier this year, it’s begun traveling and is now showing at the Corcoran in DC. For details, check out the Corcoran site or the Washington Post review.
The Post review raises the question of how difficult it is to describe what qualities of Eggleston’s work raise it to Art with a capital A. A few days ago I posted a quote from John Szarkowski, primarily responsible for giving Eggleston’s work the “Art” label, denegrating photography that is “flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless”. Yet, these are the very words that were leveled against Eggleston’s original 1976 MoMA exhibition.
Irony of ironies, the Corcoran’s show is sponsored by both the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts (among others).
William Eggleston, Democratic Camera
Through Sept 20 at Corcoran Gallery of Art
500 17th St. NW
Washington, DC
(202) 639-1700
