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was, they said, nothing to these photographs, just tricycles and road signs. But the banal
subjects and off-center framing could create a whole range of effects. His photos—lurid
and grotesque, poignant and elegiac, tough and unsentimental—served a larger social pur-
pose. They threw grit in the gears of the south's mythmaking machine—the glittering im-
ageofgrandaristocraticchivalrymoreathomeinSirWalterScottthanthepost-civilrights
South. It took a full generation for color photography to topple the fine art world's black
and white dogma. Now Eggleston's work is venerated precisely because of his eye for col-
or.
Eggleston, up to then a frequent visitor to the Chelsea, finally moved in after the 1976
show. There, he met Viva, the strawberry blonde, former top-tier superstar in Andy War-
hol's Factory scene. Now the diva, known for her tough personality, was living like Bo-
hemian royalty at the Chelsea.
According to Woodward, Eggleston was drunk and high in his Chelsea Room when
he met Viva. He vomited and took her by the arm, exclaiming, “Honey, you sure are a
strong woman.” Eggleston was already married, in the loosest sense of the word. His af-
fair with Viva survived for a number of years. They drove around the South taking photos
to the car stereo soundtrack of
Gone with the Wind.
After a couple of years of on-again-
off-again, Viva pressed him on marriage. Eggleston responded, according to Woodward,
“Honey, you're a six-part fugue and even Bach never wrote more than five.”
The partnership never led to marriage but it did spark the discovery of another great
photographer at the Chelsea, Louis Faurer. The Philadelphian had lived by his magazine
work, mostly pastel fashion photographs for
Harper's Bazaar,
where he befriended fellow
employee Robert Frank. But Faurer's artistic work remained unnoticed.
Part of what held Faurer's career back was his tetchy personality, says videographer
David Leonard, who has followed Faurer's career.
DAVID LEONARD
Faurerwasnotknownformany,manyyearsbecausehewasadifficultcharacter,
a little bit crazy. The one opportunity he had to have an exhibition, Faurer said
“Oh, you're hanging it all wrong,” and he would start taking stuff off the wall.
He was just difficult enough that, back when there weren't very many photo gal-
leries, he made a bad impression.
But Viva found out about his work. The curator Walter Hopps related the story to Leonard.
DAVID LEONARD
Walter told me, “Well, you know, we really have to thank William Eggleston for
the fact that the world knows who Louis Faurer is. When Eggleston and Viva
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