Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chelsea Seduces William Eggleston from his own MOMA
Opening
ELLIS DUNCAN
I met the photographer William Eggleston through Frank Dogrell. Doggrell was
one of the most amazing people I've ever met. He was from Memphis, where the
Doggrell family was very well-known. He looked like an old Arrow Shirt model,
withdashinggoodlooks,verylaid-backspeechpatterns,bedroomeyes,youmight
call them.
Frank got a beautiful one-bedroom that had been Dylan Thomas's suite, or at
leastpartofithad.Hegotthelivingroomandthenalittleanteroomofftotheside
which he had a bed in, and a bathroom and a fireplace. It was on the south-east
side of the building on the sixth or seventh floor. It was next to the top floor, I
think. I was there on many occasions.
He got away with being mysterious. People would say, “Frank, what do you
do for a living?”
“I'm in business,” he would say.
And people would just blink their eyes, fascinated, as if gee, they wished
they
could be in business. He used very clipped, very allusive descriptions, and gave
very short answers. That seemed to work fine because people were fascinated by
the mystery surrounding him.
But another instance in Frank Doggrell's apartment involved William Eggle-
ston, from Memphis. Eggleston was a tremendous photographer. His work now
sellsforquiteabit.He'sfascinating,quitearecluse,quiteawomanizer.Hewasin
NewYorkforthegrandopeningofhisshowattheMuseumofModernArt.Itwas
very exciting because it was the first time a color photographer had ever been ad-
mitted in a fine art museum. You had Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus—they're
black and white artists. What Eggleston did was travel around the south and take
color pictures of, say, the front of a gas station with a rusting Coca-Cola machine
witharakeleanedupagainstit.Orafamilyinsqualorsittingonthefrontporchof
their house with a washing machine. During the era, nobody thought these things
were noteworthy or picture-worthy. But he had the genius to do that, and he did
it in a very sensitive way with great photographic ability and made it into quite a
collection. The first color photo to make it into MOMA was a bare yellow light
bulb in the corner of a room. It was barely a color picture because the yellow light
bulb was kind of faded. But it was considered an earth-shattering photo.
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