Introduction to William Eggleston’s Guide by John Szarkowski (IV)

Introduction to William Eggleston’s Guide
by John Szarkowski

IF IT IS true, as I believe it is, that today’s most radical and suggestive color photography derives much of its vigor from commonplace models, this relationship is especially strong in the case of Eggleston’s work, which is consistently local and private, even insular, in its nominal concerns. The work seen here, selected from an essay of 375 pictures completed in 1971, is on the surface as hermetic as a family album. It is true that much of the best photography of this century has been created from materials that one would, from an objective, historical perspective, call trivial, for example, the wheel and fender of a Model T Ford, or the face of an anonymous sharecropper, or the passersby on an urban sidewalk; but these materials, even if slight in terms of their intrinsic, specific importance, are nevertheless public and potentially exemplary, and thus available as the carrier of symbolic freight. Eggleston, however, shows us pictures of aunts and cousins and friends, of houses in the neighborhood and in neighboring neighborhoods, of local streets and side roads, local strangers, odd souvenirs, all of this appearing not at all as it might in a social document, but as it might in a diary, where the important meanings would be not public and general but private and esoteric. It is not clear whether the bucolic modesty of the work’s subject matter should be taken at face value or whether this should be understood as a posture, an assumed ingenuousness designed to camouflage the artist’s Faustian ambition.

如果說現今最激進、最挑逗的彩色攝影是從一般大眾的行為模式中得到旺盛的動力（我相信是的），這層關係在艾哥斯頓一貫在地、私密，甚至保守的作品當中，更為強烈。這裡看到的，從完成於 1971 年的 375 張中挑選出來展示的作品（譯註：essay 同時有散文、論文的意思），表面上看來就像是私藏的家庭相本。的確，從客觀、歷史的角度來說，二十世紀最出色的攝影多取於所謂微不足道的題材，例如福特 T 型車的輪子和護柵，或是無名佃農的臉孔，或是城市街道上的行人；這些題材或許本身的重要性不值一哂，它畢竟是公開的，甚至有某種代表性以傳遞符號意義。然而，艾哥斯頓給我們看的是叔叔阿姨、表親朋友的照片、鄰近房子的照片、街道小徑的照片、不認得的當地人、奇怪的紀念品，而且全都不是他們會在公開檔案中出現的樣子，不再有公眾的重要性，而是在日記中，帶著私密且深奧的意義。我們不清楚是否該相信作品中主角們就是這般的古樸模樣，或者了解到這其實是種姿態，一種用來掩飾作者浮士德式的野心的精巧設計。

Preoccupation with private experience is a hallmark of the romantic artist, whose view is characteristically self-centered, asocial, and, at least in posture, antitraditional. If Eggleston’s perspective is essentially romantic, however, the romanticism is different in spirit and aspect from that with which we are familiar in the photography of the past generation. In that more familiar mode, photographic romanticism has tended to mean the adoption and adaptation of large public issues, social or philosophical, for private artistic ends (an activity that might be termed applied romanticism, as distinct from pure Wordsworthian independence), and it has generally been expressed in a style heavy with special effects: glints and shadows, dramatic simplicities, familiar symbols, and idiosyncratic technique.

對私人經驗的執迷是浪漫派藝術家的特徵，特別是自我中心、反社會的觀點，而且至少在姿態上是反傳統的。如果說艾哥斯頓的觀點是浪漫的，他的浪漫跟我們所熟悉的過去世代的攝影在精神上又不一樣。在那我們熟悉的模式裡，攝影浪漫主義傾向於改編採用社會或哲學上大型的公眾議題，來滿足個人藝術的目的（也許可以叫做應用浪漫主義，以和華茲華斯式（Wordsworthian）、純粹的浪漫主義做區分），且其風格常以特別效果來表現：閃爍、陰影、大量的簡化、熟悉的符號、獨特的技巧。

In Eggleston’s work these characteristics are reversed, and we see uncompromisingly private experience described in a manner that is restrained, austere, and public, a style not inappropriate for photographs that might be introduced as evidence in court.

在艾哥斯頓的作品裡，這些特性都被反轉了，我們看到他用收斂、嚴肅、公開的態度，要作為呈堂證物也不為過的風格來描寫非常私人的經驗。

Those of us with a limited appetite for the color slides made by our own friends, pictures showing people and places that we cherish, may be puzzled by experiencing a deeper and more patient interest in the pictures of unfamiliar people and places that are reproduced here. These subjects appear to be no more overtly interesting or exotic than those in our own family albums, nor do they identify themselves as representatives of a general human condition. They are simply present: clearly realized, precisely fixed, themselves, in the service of no extraneous roles. Or so the photographs would have us believe. In truth the people and places described here are not so sovereign as they seem, for they serve the role of subject matter. They serve Eggleston’s interests.

即便是對自己朋友拍攝的、秀著我們喜愛的人事景物的彩色相片，我們也會有不耐的時候，卻為什麼會對這裡再現的陌生地方和人們感覺到更深層、持久的興趣。這些對象看起來並沒有比我們家裡的相簿來得有趣，或帶有異國風情，他們也不代表普遍的人生狀態。他們就是那樣：清楚的實體，精準的定格，自我，不扮演多餘的角色。或者說是攝影家要我們這樣相信。事實上，這裡所描述的地方和人們並不如他們看起來的自主。他們配合艾哥斯頓的喜好，扮演照片的主角。

The simplicity of these pictures is (as the reader will have guessed) not so simple. When Alfred H. Barr, Jr., first saw a selection of slides from this series in 1972 he observed – surprisingly but in fact accurately – that the design of most of the pictures seemed to radiate from a central, circular core. In time the observation was relayed to Eggleston, who replied, after a barely perceptible hesitation, that this was true, since the pictures were based compositionally on the Confederate flag – not the asterisk, or the common daisy, or the dove of the Holy Ghost, but the Confederate flag. The response was presumably improvised and unresponsive, of interest only as an illustration of the lengths to which artists sometimes go to frustrate rational analysis of their work, as though they fear it might prove an antidote to their magic.

（如讀者所猜的）這些簡單的照片並不簡單。小艾佛列 ‧ 巴爾（Alfred Barr, Jr.，紐約現代藝術博物館第一任館長）在 1972 年第一次看到部分照片時，他發現 ─ 令人驚訝地但也正確無誤地 ─ 大部分的影像設計似乎是從中央圓形的核心向四周發散。當消息傳到艾哥斯頓時，他毫無遲疑地回應沒錯，這些影像是以美國南部邦聯的旗幟為底的構圖 ─ 不是星號、雛菊、或神主的白鴿，而是南部邦聯旗。這個回答應是臨時興起，但答了等於沒答，只是說明了藝術家往往為了抗拒對他們作品理性分析的不擇手段，好像害怕這會變成對他們魔力的一種解藥。

Barr’s comment however is valuable, and suggests in concrete terms a quality central to Eggleston’s work: a lean, monocular intentness that fixes the subject as sharply as if it were recalled from eidetic memory.

然而巴爾的意見是寶貴的，並明白地指出了艾哥斯頓作品的一個中心特質：一種不多餘、單一的，像在記憶裡將主題深深地定位下來的意圖。

Reduced to monochrome, Eggleston’s designs would be in fact almost static, almost as blandly resolved as the patterns seen in kaleidoscope, but they are perceived in color, where the wedge of purple necktie, or the red disk of the stoplight against the sky, has a different compositional torque than its equivalent panchromatic gray, as well as a different meaning. For Eggleston, who was perhaps never fully committed to photography in black and white, the lesson would be more easily and naturally learned, enabling him to make these pictures: real photographs, bits lifted from the visceral world with such tact and cunning that they seem true, seen in color from corner to corner.

把艾哥斯頓的作品簡化成黑白色調，他的構圖設計將陷入停滯，幾乎像萬花筒裡的花案無味散去，但是當用色彩去理解，紫色領帶的菱角，一盞圓碟形的紅燈對著天空，比起單色調的灰，更有著一種不同的構圖力道，不同的意義。對從未完全投身於黑白攝影的艾哥斯頓來說，他更自然也更輕易地學得這項功課，讓他創作出這些影像：狡猾老練地將感官世界裡的一點一滴昇華成真，徹頭徹尾彩色，真正的相片。

— 我是分隔線 —

發現 Szarkowski 對 Eggleston 對於照片的回應都充滿懷疑：第一段便不相信 Eggleston 自認為形式主義的說詞，這裡又直斥他南方邦聯旗構圖的說法是呼弄人的小伎倆，反倒拿來作為 Eggleston 溜嘴說出照片中濃濃南方氣息的證明。其實 Eggleston 不受訪問、省話一哥的性格在攝影界是出名的，多年來也圍繞成一種謎般的神祕氣質。想必 Szarkowski 在跟他交手多次之後，對他單字式的回答，和他言語背後的想法也多少有點能夠拿捏掌握。只是這樣直來直往，猜想在現實世界中未能發生的對話，出現在一篇出道作品的導讀裡，很有意思。