WILLIAM EGGLESTON (b. 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee) was raised on his family’s plantation in Sumner, Mississippi. After discovering photography in the early 1960s, he abandoned a traditional education and learned about the medium from illustrated books by Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. Although he began his career making black and white photographs, he soon transitioned to color technology at a time when color photography was largely confined to commercial advertising. In 1976 with the support of influential historian, critic and curator, John Szarkowski, Eggleston’s work became the subject of the groundbreaking exhibition “Color Photographs” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The companion catalogue “William Eggleston’s Guide” became a quintessential publication within the history of color photography and helped establish the artist as a pioneer of the medium.