William Eggleston Analysis.

William Eggleston is an American photographer from Memphis, Tennessee whose work focuses a lot on documenting various landscapes, street environments and societies within the United States of America as well as the human impact on these landscapes and the effects that we may have on our society and the environments we live in, using the formal elements of lighting, colours and compositions. For this artist analysis, I will be specifically looking at his street and landscape photography series in response to the theme of 'Society' for this project. I decided to document and research the work of William Eggleston in relation to this theme as I intend to take a series of photographs that document the urban society that I live in and around - such as Croydon, Kingston, London and Bromley  - and the impact that we have on our society such as graffiti, street art, construction, homelessness and the general lack of care we show our society and the environments that we live in. This is something I felt inspired by whilst researching and analysing the work of William Eggleston as I really like how he uses the formal elements of colour and composition to draw attention to minor details within the landscape or street environment that he is documenting within his photographic work in order to emphasize or highlight the type of society and people that live in this environment and how they may have constructed and affected the landscape around them.

Many of William Eggleston's photographs are kept central using the rules of thirds with a range of long-distance, closeup and mid-shot compositional angles in order to document the urban landscapes and the impact that we have on our society. Despite William Eggleston's photographs being based around the theme of landscape and street photography he tends to capture some of his imagery in the portrait camera angle which I feel helps give his photographs the sense that the landscapes and street photographs are being taken of very claustrophobic areas, similar to the work of Saul Leiter.

A lot of the photographs that William Eggleston has taken in order to create he project are based around various urban landscapes and street environments that make up the society that he is documenting within his work. He often focuses a lot of his landscape and street photographic work on the uses of the formal elements of lighting, colour and composition of the photograph itself in order to emphasize specific areas of focus within his imagery whilst also making some of his street and interior photographs feel more claustrophobic due to taking the photograph in the portraiture composition, which also helps to create a leading line of focus within the imagery the artist creates. This is something that I could potentially take inspiration from within my own landscape photographic work responding to the theme of 'Society' by documenting photographs of the urban society using different tones, colours, lighting and compositions to highlight a specific element or section of the landscape or street that I will be documenting within my photographs to emphasize a theme of grittiness and claustrophobia of city life.

Within my own photographic response I have decided to take a series of landscape and street
photographs that I will document the theme of 'Society' by photographing the different urban environments of Croydon, Kingston, London and Bromley and the damages and the lack of care that humans have for their own society within my photographs, focusing on the grit and grime that the city and town landscapes may have such as graffiti, homelessness, street art and damages to buildings and the like as well as the changes that we are often making to our own society such as construction sites and the demolishment of buildings.