William Eggleston - Portraits 1974

William Eggleston's Portraits is a small exhibition of previously unexhibited, indeed previously undeveloped, photography from 1974 Memphis. The three decade delay in the processing of the film, the time lapse between the creation and the display of the images, lends an interesting dimension of
meaning, indeed a certain poignancy to the portraits. Each image can be read
as a vignette-like scene, a tiny archive of a moment, a place, a
personality, captured and imprisoned for all this time, suddenly displayed
to a foreign, perhaps impossibly futuristic audience. You cannot help but
speculate as to the people portrayed - what happened to them? What did they
hope would come of being photographed? Were their hopes cruelly dashed?
One image in particular, a teenaged girl in a cropped t-shirt leaning
against the side of a soft-top car in a mime of modelling, feels a bit sad.
She has the look of someone who hopes that this might mean something, that
someone may 'discover' her and transform her Deep South life. In a way, the
artist's decision to delay the processing of his film could be seen as an
exercise in power, one containing – for this young girl at least - a certain
aspect of cruelty. For us, however, it somehow renders the images much more
exciting than other, contemporary images, ones which have been in the light
of day all this time. For people watchers, a bit of a stolen treat. [Rosamund West]