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American photographer William Eggleston introduced colour photography into an art world still clinging to monochrome.
When the Museum of Modern Art in New York used Eggleston's work to mark its first one-man colour photographic exhibition in 1976, the museum inflamed outrage in the critics who dismissed the saturated hues and everyday minutiae of his oeuvre as banal and boring. Photographer Ansell Adams even declared Eggleston's work as unfit for museum display.
With an idiosyncratic eye, Michael Almereyda's documentary follows this unassuming 65-year-old photographic pioneer as he engages in a series of pictures commissioned by filmmaker Gus Van Sant.
Almereyda fashions a portrait of a man far removed from the bright lights of big city art hoo-ha. In keeping with his photographic style, Almereyda even intrudes on Eggleston's mundane moments, those when he is not taking photos; the most poignant one being a late night encounter between Eggleston and his friend where they listen to REM, drink booze and discuss matters of life and death.
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D/P Michael Almereyda WS High Line video//2005/84mins
Michael Almereyda was born in Kansas, USA, in 1960. His films include Twister (1990), Nadja (1994), Hamlet (2000) and Happy Here and Now (2002).
