Eggleston's mature work is characterized by its ordinary subject-matter. As Eudora Welty noted in her introduction to The Democratic Forest, an Eggleston photograph might include "old tyres, Dr Pepper machines, discarded air-conditioners, vending machines, empty and dirty Coca-Cola bottles, torn posters, power poles and power wires, street barricades, one-way signs, detour signs, No Parking signs, parking meters and palm trees crowding the same curb."
Eudora Welty suggests that Eggleston sees the complexity and beauty of the mundane world: "The extraordinary, compelling, honest, beautiful and unsparing photographs all have to do with the quality of our lives in the ongoing world: they succeed in showing us the grain of the present, like the cross-section of a tree.... They focus on the mundane world. But no subject is fuller of implications than the mundane world!" -- from Wikipedia quoting Eudora Welty in [Eggleston's] Artistic Development].
Younger William Eggleston with one of his many Leicas. See frame 7:56 of Part II.
Red Ceiling, Greenwood, Mississippi, circa 1969
Untitled [girl on grass] 1975
The Guardian [UK] ran a photo of just the dog in one of its pieces about Eggleston.
Untitled, date unknown
Untitled, date unknown
Links:
http://www.egglestontrust.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGR6_H-G17c
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography-blog/2013/apr/05/william-eggleston-outstanding-contribution-photography
http://www.photoforager.com/archives/william-eggleston-the-father-of-colour
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/nov/05/william-eggleston-democratic-camera-review
http://pleasurephoto.wordpress.com/tag/william-eggleston/page/5/
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