"I want an absence of too much prettiness...Not a complete absence of it,but just like coffee, pictures get too sweet."- William Eggleston, 2009
William Eggleston claims that his new and ongoing Paris project could be his "crowning achievement", comparing it to Atget's own French portfolio a century earlier. Having seen a selection of them at the Fondation Cartier in Paris last week, I can't help thinking that he might be losing his critical faculties.
The best pictures, like the one above, feel a little contrived, while others seem lazy, snatched or simply repeats of other compositions from earlier in his career. It got me to thinking that maybe I only love his older photographs because they now serve as a time capsule that preserve lost stylistic details from the 1960s and 1970s, whereas these latest photographs are all too easily obtainable in the streets surrounding the gallery. Perhaps in thirty years, they might emerge as a more definitive and evocative portrait of modern Paris but in the mean time, I'm happier to return to classics like this...
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These get better the more you look at them, like all art should! I like your blog and tomorrow I shall look at the rest of you blogs. I love being introduced to new photographers. Thanks!
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