Photographer William Eggleston shows America in vivid detail, composing pictures made of ordinary objects. His photographs direct attention to the things some ignore, making banal subjects look like aliens to be studied.
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He was born in Memphis in 1939 and raised in Sumner, Mississippi. Over six decades, Eggleston’s sophisticated color and form produced visual poetry from distinct subjects. His pictorial style is in the details, keeping in what most photographers would crop out. Eggleston is one of the most influential artists of American visual culture.
Against late-’60s black-and-white chic, Eggleston embraced color and pioneered modern color photography, capturing everyday views and trinkets and displaying them in high fidelity. His work is without explanation, letting the viewer find the mystery in the ordinary.
His photos have graced the covers of records by Big Star, Spoon, Silver Jews, Primal Scream, and Jimmy Eat World. Highlighted below is a collection of iconic album covers by photographer William Eggleston.
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1. Big Star, Radio City (1974)
Radio City might be Eggleston’s most famous album cover photo. It’s a jarring, minimalist photograph of a starkly painted red room with an exposed light bulb. The white cords spew out from the fixture like the beginnings of a spider web. Eggleston was friends with Alex Chilton’s parents, and the photo was offered nonchalantly for Big Star’s album cover. “The Red Ceiling” is from Eggleston’s Greenwood, Mississippi, 1973 series. Eggleston told the Getty the red paint was so powerful it looked like wet blood. Speaking to the complexity of reproducing the image, he said, “I’ve never seen it reproduced on the page to my satisfaction.”
2. Spoon, Transference (2010)
Spoon’s frontman Britt Daniel saw Eggleston’s photo of a kid in a chair at the Whitney Museum in New York City. It was part of a series called Sumner, Mississippi, 1972. Eggleston doesn’t bother titling his photographs, leaving meaning and interpretation to the viewer. Daniel was intrigued by the look on the kid’s face and the idea of making up your own story about what’s happening in the photo. When Spoon was in Los Angeles mixing the album with engineer Dave Sardy, Daniel noticed a book of Eggleston’s photos in the studio. The picture of the kid in the chair was in the book, completing the photo’s coincidental journey to the album cover. The kid in the photo is Eggleston’s nephew.
3. The Derek Trucks Band, Soul Serenade (2003)
Eggleston’s Untitled (Near Minter City and Glendora, Mississippi), 1970, graces the cover of The Derek Trucks Band’s Soul Serenade. Many of Eggleston’s photos of America are shot without people, making the Soul Serenade cover even more striking. Soul Serenade is the fourth studio album from The Derek Trucks Band, where Trucks leans heavily on jazz. Like Reid Miles’s iconic cover work for Blue Note Records, Eggleston’s album cover photos place familiar American moments within the context of culture.
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4. Jimmy Eat World, Bleed American (2001)
Jimmy Eat World chose an untitled photo from Eggleston’s Los Alamos series to represent the fragility of success. Singer and guitarist Jim Adkins told the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that the photo balances pride and perspective. The trophies probably meant the world to whoever won them, but sitting on top of a cigarette machine puts the success in perspective. Eggleston doesn’t have much to say about his photographs. All the information is in the picture.
5. Silver Jews, Tanglewood Numbers (2005)
The Pavement-adjacent Silver Jews released their fifth album in 2005. Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich contributed to poet and musician David Berman’s project. Malkmus, Nastanovich, and Berman were attending the University of Virginia when they formed Silver Jews in 1989. The group is very much NOT a Pavement side project less you face the wrath of Berman. In college, Berman discovered Big Star and Eggleston. The reason for selecting an Eggleston photo was to bring the Silver Jews into the rock mainstream. The cover image comes from Eggleston’s Los Alamos series. Berman was drawn to the photo’s warmth.
6. Primal Scream, Give Out But Don’t Give Up (1994)
Primal Scream followed their 1991 masterpiece Screamadelica by reinventing their sound, chasing soul music in the American South. Give Out But Don’t Give Up was recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis, TN. Singer Bobbie Gillespie wanted an album image reflecting the band’s new American sound. Tracking with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Band, George Clinton, Tom Dowd, and Jim Dickinson, Primal Scream was treading the well-worn path of Let It Bleed-era Rolling Stones in echoing American blues and soul music. Keeping with all things Memphis, the band chose an Eggleston photo for the cover. They were immediately criticized for using the Confederate image. The neon Confederate flag photo is a cropped version of Troubled Waters by Eggleston. Eggleston doesn’t judge or explain his art. An alternate cover replaced the original using a (non-Eggleston) black-and-white photo of the band.
Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images
