Memphis

After encountering the “decisive moment” photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson in the mid-1960s, William Eggleston applied Cartier-Bresson’s formal rigor to banal subject matter and began working exclusively in color. Eggleston catapulted to notoriety when the Museum of Modern Art organized a one-person show in 1976, accompanied by a monograph, William Eggleston’s Guide. Many initial reactions to the show were negative—color photography was thought to be the purview of commercial work, and the elevation of the mundane as subject matter was met with skepticism—but the show affirmed that serious art could be made in color and with unassuming or even lowbrow subjects. This nearly monochromatic photograph of an oven in Eggleston’s hometown of Memphis, included in the Guide, hints simultaneously at domestic comfort and potential danger.