I’ve been making photographs in Oklahoma when I get a chance to go back. These are some photos I took last summer at a rodeo in Altus, Oklahoma, my hometown. They don’t fit into my body of work at this point but I do have a new project lined up this August that has roots in these images. I’m very excited to get back to work in Okla again with a more focused approach.
I frequently show photography students clips from the film William Eggleston in the Real World by Michael Almereyda. In many respects the filmmaking and editing is sub par, but I am interested in how Almereyda follows Eggleston around as he searches for things that interest him “in the real world”. He trips over curbs, wanders into the street, get’s toilet paper stuck to his shoe and all the while he’s looking through the lens. Later parts of the film reveal just how socially awkward Eggleston is by showing him frequently mumbling, producing drunk drawings for a friend, and receiving a lifetime achievement award and skipping the speech. I (like everyone else) love Eggleston’s work but I might be more enamored with the eccentricities of the man himself.
Anyway, there is a new film coming out on Eggleston by Reiner Holzemer. Below is a clip.
Eggleston speaks about the negative reviews he received from critics during his MOMA exhibition in 1976. “I really felt sorry for them because it was so obvious..it’s like they had the wrong job. They didn’t understand what they were looking at..”