In 1976, the Museum of Modern Art, under John Szarkowski’s venerable directorship, dedicated its ­first solo show to a color photographer, William Eggleston. The choice was grounded in controversy for its sharp divergence from the previously held tenets of ­fine art photography. That is, up until then, for a photograph to retain an artistic value it was to be printed in black and white, be deliberate in its cropping,and have a central subject. Eggleston, however, challenged all three tenets,producing images that were saturated in color, seemingly accidental in their cropping, and unabashedly banal. In doing so, Eggleston demanded that the parameters de­fining fi­ne art photography be expanded to include a far greater repertoire. “I want to make a picture that could stand on its own”, he once noted, “regardless of what it was a picture of.” Indeed, over the course of his career, Eggleston turned his lens away from the typical photographic trappings and created a cohesive body of work united by his quiet and subversive vision.William Eggleston’s Graceland, the current lot, depicts eleven unexpected views of Elvis’s fabled mansion. Eggleston carefully eschews any of the common tourist baits at the mansion—the Neoclassical façade, the water fountain, the lavish ample entertainment rooms, the elaborate chandeliers, the hall of memorabilia—and instead opts for intimate images, which outside the context of the portfolio, could not have been linked as readily to their point of origin. In that regard, the images off­ered do not reveal a consciousness of the place or a concern with capturing the typical essence of the environment. Collectively, the images celebrate the understated charm in randomness over the overstated grandeur in the hackneyed and familiar. Subverting Henri Cartier-Bresson’s mantra about the decisive moment, Eggleston elevates the anti-climactic to the top, allowing otherwise unnoticed moments to shine simply for existing, no justification needed. As a portfolio, Eggleston’s Graceland pays homage to Elvis in a humble manner, recognizing the appeal in the arbitrary and the plain, subsequently grounding the King in the realm of the pleasingly accessible and approachably banal.

Eggleston employs a similar approach in Troubled Waters (lot 14.) Once again turning his lens away from full compositions providing few clues regarding context and scale, the portfolio is comprised of fifteen images that range from uncommonly low vantage points of a non-descript living room to a wide-angle view of a closed gas station. The images are insistently untethered to a common theme or location and Eggleston provides no threads connecting one image to the next, forcing viewers to break the conceptual pattern of discovering an underlying narrative and instead focus on the formal qualities belying each work, especially through color. As a result, the inside of a freezer reveals a great subtle variation of the color white, muddy tire marks and potholes become reflective vessels for the colorful sky, and even a heap of refuse becomes a study of volume and composition. As in Graceland, the prints in Troubled Waters are dye-transfer, imbuing each print with strikingly lush color saturation, keeping the viewers eyes as engaged as when the prints were first made and the images first taken.