Near Jackson, Mississippi

In the 1960s, an encounter with the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson galvanized Eggleston to adopt a more rigorous practice of photography. Blending Cartier-Bresson’s formal rigor with an explorative openness to new subject matter, Eggleston was soon working exclusively in color, producing rich, saturated dye-transfer prints. Although the 1975 exhibition of his work was met with skepticism, it declared to an entire generation of photographers that serious art could be made in color and with unassuming subjects drawn from the artist’s own experience. In this seemingly simple study, an abstracted American palette of red, white, and blue appears in a hanging jacket whose peaked hood carries more ominous connotations. Eggleston’s photographs are the necessary preamble to the work of such later talents as Richard Misrach and Nan Goldin.