Last night, I stumbled into this free On Demand documentary "William Eggleston: In the real world". The movie was probably a little too dry for my taste as I fell asleep through certain parts of it (i'll have to watch it again when i'm not so freakin tired).

"Memphis" (c. 1970) set a world auction record at Christie's in NY, for $253,900 on 15 Oct. 2004. Source: Eggleston Trust

His photography on the other hand, is a totally different matter. I love his work and I think he's deserving of the title that has been frequently attributed to him: Father of Color Photography. It's the sort of photography that critics (and photographers even) either love or hate. In fact, according to the movie, when he exhibited his work in 1976 at the MoMA, St. Ansel was quick in sending a note to the curator about his disappointment.

In one scene where he was giving a talk about his work process, he was asked why he only takes one shot of his subject and quickly move on, his reply was something along the lines of "... it is too confusing to edit. If I take 6 frames of the same subject and need only one, I'd end up with 5 extras".

It's unfortunate that the production quality of the movie wasn't up to par with his work. The audio was so bad in certain parts that they had to put captions on it. Although the movie was produced by somebody else, this is somewhat ironic since his two sons, William and Winston are high-end speaker designers.

• Kodachrome Moment: How William Eggleston's revolutionary exhibition changed everything.
  In a way, Eggleston did for color photography what the Dutch Masters of genre did for painting in the 16th and 17th centuries: He took it out of the hands of the wealthy institutions that had sponsored it (fashion magazines and advertising agencies in the one case, the church in the other) and turned it into an expression of the everyday. It is not so far, after all, from the vulgar to the vernacular: Eggleston bridged the gap, and in doing so delivered color back into the hands of art.
• salon.com on Eggleston
• William Eggleston Trust
• Wikipedia
• KultureFlash Interview Nov. 22, 2004