A woman stands before an avocado-green refrigerator in a kitchen somewhere in the Mississippi Delta, 1977, her hand on the chrome handle mid-motion as she turns her head to look at something out of frame, her housedress a floral explosion of orange and brown polyester that competes with the geometric linoleum floor pattern of harvest gold and harvest gold. The on-camera flash creates stark, sculptural shadows behind her, emphasizing the artificial wood-grain contact paper covering the cabinets and the yellowed lace curtain that filters harsh afternoon sun into a pattern of dots on her shoulder. The countertop holds a partially open bag of Wonder Bread, a stick of Parkay margarine sweating on a glass dish, and a rotary telephone with a tangled spiral cord. The composition employs Eggleston’s democratic eye—the electrical outlet with its two-prong plug is given equal compositional weight to the woman’s face, while the foreground includes the edge of a chrome dinette chair and a crumpled napkin. Dye-transfer saturation makes the arterial red of a lone tomato in a wire basket vibrate against the sickly green of the appliance, capturing the suffocating beauty of domestic routine and the isolation of the housewife in 1970s America.
eggleston_style
