Last week I’d been asked 4, 5 times, have you been to the Eggleston show at the Whitney?  So I finally made it, and now I’m asking everyone, so have you been to the Eggleston…?

It’s a beautiful show, the first retrospective of one of the fathers of modern fine art photography; it’s the kind of show that reminds one why; why photography; why take pictures; why get out of bed in the morning.

There were two things that distinctly crossed my mind.

1) How remarkable Eggleston’s early prints are.  There were lightjets, inkjets, C-prints, silver-gelatin, but his early dye transfer prints were in a different ball park.  They were interpretive and captivating and technically remarkable.

2) There’s no way to speak what it is or why it is or how it is, the only thing that is certain is that work like Eggleston’s is something that can’t be faked.  It’d be like faking being human or faking being in love.

photo: the Eggleston Retrospective at the Whitney.

“I’m at war with the obvious.” -William Eggleston