William Eggleston
[Photographer, b. 1939, Memphis, Tennessee, lives in Memphis.]

 We have a few things in common—smoking, drinking, and women. Photography just gets us out of the house. (To photographer Juergen Teller) 
 I am at war with the obvious. 
 You can take a good picture of anything. A bad one, too. 
 I don’t have a burning desire to go out and document anything. It just happens when it happens. It’s not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn’t do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough. 
 I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around, that nothing was more or less important. 
 Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it’s just about impossible to follow up with words. They don’t have anything to do with each other. 
 Everything [in a photograph] works, or nothing works. 
 I never think of [a photograph] beforehand. When I get there, something happens and in a split second the pictures emerges. 
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