Below is a photograph by William Eggleston that I saw on the cover of a book called ‘How to Read a Photograph’ by Ian Jeffrey.
'Black Family By the Sea' by William Eggleston - used with permission: (c)Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy Cheim & Read, New York
I didn’t buy the book (it was in a museum gift shop, and I was on my way out), but I was fascinated by the image, which is beautiful for many reasons. It has the odd, unreal quality of seeming both staged and unstaged. Notice how the family members appear as though they’ve been posed, though not necessarily by the photographer himself. They are looking into a distance that has nothing to do with the viewer, as if something has caught their attention. Perhaps they have seen something on the beach, or in the water, or have turned toward someone who has called to them from across the parking lot. Perhaps someone we can’t see is taking their picture. Or perhaps they are simply waiting. Who knows? What’s important is that this camera has caught them unaware, in an ordinary moment, yet it has framed them in such a way that their form – the actual shape they make together – becomes the focus of our attention. We tend to see them as a unit, a family, and the title of the photograph encourages us to dwell on what that means.
