Ancient and Modern

Le livre

The appreciation of Egglestons work has come a long way since his pioneering 1976 exhibition, William Egglestons Guide, at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art. He has been called the father of colour photography and since the 1990s he is widely regarded as the leading and most influential colour photographer of the twentieth century.Ancient and Modernis a collection of photographs chosen from Egglestons earliest photographs taken in the American South, Africa and England. The photographs depict subjects and objects from everyday life and it is Egglestons unique ability to find beauty, and striking displays of colour, in ordinary scenes.Mark Holborn, in his illuminating introduction, writes about the dark undercurrent of these mundane scenes as viewed through Egglestons lens: [Egglestons] subjects are, on the surface, the ordinary inhabitants and environs of suburban Memphis and Mississippi - friends, family, barbecues, back yards, a tricycle and the clutter of the mundane. The normality of these subjects is deceptive, for behind the images there is a sense of lurking danger.