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Was Eggleston blind?
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No, he is not blind.
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Then why does he talk like one? If nothing is more or less important then you see either all things together at once—arguably a privilege of the gods—or you see nothing at all but imagine those things all the better for it—what the Greeks understood as a privilege of the blind seeer.
What those Greeks most likely would not have understood is what Eggleston meant with “democracy”.
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I think he’s pointing to something closer to what Keats called negative capability.
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The eye is inherently selective; there is no way of looking that is democratic in this sense. This is a very helpful quote for the classroom to provoke discussion, though!
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I think he’s simply referring to what/how he “chooses” to photograph—that a photograph is about light and composition as much as it is about “theme,” and that his themes are evoked via light and composition.
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