The 1976 debut of William Eggleston's Guide at the Museum of Modern Art marks the color photograph's entrée into the world of fine art. Critics of Eggleston claim he is a slumming aristocrat whose photographs are not worthy of a frame of film. His admirers counter by saying he possesses the gift of being able to make photographs out of nothing. At his best, the seemingly casual and dispassionate manner of his images masks his adroitness as a caustic yet affectionate memoirist of the banality and
strangeness of everyday America in which objects take on a personality and become portraits.
