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I want to make a picture that could stand on its own, regardless of what it was a picture of. I've never been a bit interested in the fact that this was a picture of a blues musician or a street corner or something.

William Eggleston

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William Eggleston
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: July 27
Artist
Photographer
Memphis
Tennessee
Bill Eggleston
Never
Interested
Blues
Streets
Regardless
Bits
Corner
Stand
Corners
Fact
Photographer
Facts
Street
Something
Picture
Make
Musician

More quotes by William Eggleston

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I quite frequently don't look through the camera, which is very close to being blind.
William Eggleston
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I am at war with the obvious.
William Eggleston
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A person can attack that bottle of vodka and drink it like it's a bottle of cold water. Two of my wife's girlfriends died from drinking. They weren't big pill-takers they were drinkers. So it can't be so simple as to slide away, like Marilyn Monroe.
William Eggleston
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There is no particular reason to search for meaning.
William Eggleston
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I think with being blind the one thing you would have going is that you could still feel things, see your way around so to speak. And if you had had the experience of seeing at one time in your life, then you would know what it was like and be able to function. I've said this before, I think I could really photograph blind if I had to.
William Eggleston
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And what we called photojournalism, the photos seen in places like Life magazine, didn't interest me either. They were just not good-there was no art there. The first person who I respected immensely was Henri Cartier-Bresson. I still do.
William Eggleston
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Many people one meets in life somehow think they know you simply because they're hanging out at the same counter-but they really don't know a thing about you.
William Eggleston
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Well, probably the best way to put it might be that at some time, not just in an instant, but over some period of time I became aware of the fact that I wanted to document examples like Kroger or Piggly Wiggly in the late '50s, early '60s.
William Eggleston
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Photography just gets us out of the house.
William Eggleston
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The immediate reviews were very hostile, but they didn't bother me-I had the attitude that I was right. The poor guys who were critics just didn't understand the works at all. I was sorry about that, but it didn't weigh on my mind a bit.
William Eggleston
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Whether a photo or music, or a drawing or anything else I might do—it’s ultimately all an abstraction of my peculiar experience.
William Eggleston
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Generally, that's what happens-a fundamental rotting of the idea. They woke up with the wrong idea. It's just like music: If you don't have an innate love or calling for it, then no matter how much you study or how well you can play by looking at the score, it doesn't mean that you're going to make really good music.
William Eggleston
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Half voluntarily, half Winston's older brother [William] would take me in, saying, Daddy, I think you oughta do this. And I'd say, I think you're right, maybe I do need it. Sometimes a week later I'd leave the place sometimes I'd stick it out for a month.
William Eggleston
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I don't look at other photographs much at all. I don't know why. I study my own a lot.
William Eggleston
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I don't like reading music. It's like learning a language. You can't read music proficiently overnight. It takes time, it's boring work.
William Eggleston
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There are a lot of unseen projects. When a project is finished, I often physically, and in my mind, set it aside, intending something to happen with it, something that does or does not always happen. Now, a lot of these are being resurrected for the public.
William Eggleston
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I only ever take one picture of one thing. Literally. Never two. So then that picture is taken and then the next one is waiting somewhere else.
William Eggleston
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I knew it was happening, but I never paid much attention to it . . . just to the passage of time. Something new always slowly changes right in front of your eyes - it just happens.
William Eggleston
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I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around, that nothing was more or less important.
William Eggleston
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I don't think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day.
William Eggleston