William Eggleston 2- Kirila

''The red ceiling''

Eggleston's subjects take on a kind of devil-may-care vulgarity. Walker Evans's careful studies might impart poetic dignity to everyday objects, but where was the poetry in Eggleston's images of a jumble of shoes under a bed, a refrigerator crammed with frozen food and an utterly unremarkable shower-cubicle?

His work certainly shocked the critics at his 1976 exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art. One damned it as an example of "the banal leading the banal". The New York Times called it "the most hated show in town". But Eggleston's fame increased with a remarkable sequence of books. They included "Election Eve", atmospheric shots of Jimmy Carter's Georgian hometown in 1976; "Graceland", chilling views of Elvis Presley's mansion-mausoleum; and "The Democratic Forest", a wide-ranging, almost Zen-like compilation of the bewildering variety of American life.

Eggleston has said he is "at war with the obvious", but the obvious forms some of his most effective subjects. Grouped together, as at "Ancient and Modern", his views of the everyday become not just conventionally poetic, but weird, touching, disturbing, banal and--not infrequently--unexpectedly beautiful. Detractors have said he has "no respect for the medium" because of his willingness to take pictures just as they come, even sometimes removing the viewfinder from his camera to shoot literally from the hip. Conversely, however, he seems to have great respect for the manifold images of life--high, low or middling--that photography can produce.

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                                                                       ''Torch cafe''