William Eggleston is one of my favorite photographers. The man found high art in parking lots, tricycles, and a freezer full of TV dinners. Democratic photography, he called it. Everything is worth looking at.
So I had a brilliant idea. I would channel Eggleston using a 20-year-old digital camera. Old sensor, mundane subjects, pure vision. What could go wrong?
Everything. Everything could go wrong.
Here is what I learned, and it is the thing nobody wants to hear about their heroes. Eggleston’s genius was never the camera. It was the seeing. He could make a photograph out of a ceiling because he understood color, composition, and the weird poetry of ordinary things. Hand him a disposable camera and he would still be Eggleston. Hand me his exact setup and I am still me, taking pictures of a parking lot that just look like a parking lot.
The camera is the least interesting part of any great photograph. I knew that. I just needed a 20-year-old digital camera to remind me.
Sorry, William. You would have hated my pictures, and you would have been right.
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