at war with the obvious

in interview magazine william eggleston talks with harmony korine. again the similarities between harmony and david byrne are inescapable to me. korine's questions are refreshingly simple. he's not trying to show off or hide his basic curiosities as a fan. the result is eggleston talkign very plainly about his his approach to photography. some excerpts:



HK: Your first big show was at MoMA in 1976?

WE: Yes. The immediate reviews were very hostile, but they didn't bother me-I had the attitude that I was right. The poor guys who were critics just didn't understand the works at all. I was sorry about that, but it didn't weigh on my mind a bit.



HK: Sometimes when you're driving and you look out the window, do you ever think, That would be nice to photograph?

WE: Oh, quite frequently.

HK: Do you always have a camera with you?

WE: Not always. Almost always. If not on me or in the glove compartment, then at least in my bag.

HK: Have there been times in your life when you wished you had a camera?

WE: Yes, but I don't dwell on them because they pass in an instant.

HK: Are there any particular images that you've never been able to get out of your head?

WE: Not that I can think of. I've also never had favorite pictures. Or subjects. I have this discipline of treating everything equally-I used to say "democratically."

HK: You kind of edit as you go. In some ways you work opposite of how a lot of photographers work today.

WE: Exactly. They take too many pictures.

HK: Well, it's playing the odds, right? If you take a thousand photos-

WE: It doesn't mean that one is going to be good. That's the problem.

HK: You can take a thousand photos and they could all be terrible.

WE: Generally, that's what happens-a fundamental rotting of the idea. They woke up with the wrong idea. It's just like music: If you don't have an innate love or calling for it, then no matter how much you study or how well you can play by looking at the score, it doesn't mean that you're going to make really good music.

HK: It has more to do with what's inside you.

WE: It has to do with what can and can't be taught-you can't teach composition. Where would you begin?



HK: What about digital photography?

WE: Don't know anything about it.

HK: Have you ever shot with a digital camera?

WE: As I said, I don't know anything about it. I don't know, I might love it.

HK: You're not opposed to it?

WE: There's plenty of film out there, and quadrillions of cameras that use film-I don't think it makes much sense not to use it. The thing that's going out is the manufacturing of the paper. Incidentally, all these years my wife has told me that I'm color-blind.

HK: You're color-blind?

WE: Yes.

HK: That would be amazing if you were color-blind. If you had to choose between being blind or being deaf, which one would you choose?

WE: Don't know. I don't have any experience with that, except for my color blindness.

HK: But if you were forced to make the decision.

WE: I think with being blind the one thing you would have going is that you could still feel things, see your way around so to speak. And if you had had the experience of seeing at one time in your life, then you would know what it was like and be able to function. I've said this before, I think I could really photograph blind if I had to.

HK: It would be possible to photograph blind?

WE: I quite frequently don't look through the camera, which is very close to being blind.



the observer wrote:
it would be difficult to imagine the world according to david lynch, gus van sant, juergen teller or sofia coppola without the world according to william eggleston.