sonyacita
Eggleston-ing in Montreal
“I am at war with the obvious.” — William Eggleston
In animal husbandry, there’s something called Lusus Naturae. A sport of nature. It refers to a spontaneous mutation that exhibits abnormal variations from the parent stock. In other words, it’s a biological anomaly that occurs organically.
We could say the same thing about the photography of Bill Eggleston (that’s right, I call him Bill). His photographs are less about what’s in front of the camera and more about the intense act of observation. His work is about releasing the camera shutter at a moment when the mundane mutates, when there is an abnormal variation from the parent stock.
What makes Sonya’s photograph remarkable isn’t the subject matter itself; it’s the way everything in front of the camera momentarily transcends the subject matter. Notice how the stripes of the woman’s dress mirror the pizza boxes on display. Notice the distribution of red around the frame, how it gathers the eye, how it draws our attention even though each individual red object isn’t very interesting in itself. Notice…of course you’ve already noticed this…the woman is faceless, headless, universal. Every single facet of this photograph is obvious, and yet it is clearly a sport of nature — an extraordinary and abnormal variation of a normal moment.
Editorial note: This just one of dozens of astonishing photographs in Utata’s Homage project.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
