Hello, I'm William Eggleston.
ALMEREYDA: I just happened
to flip to this at the very beginning.
It's a very dramatic picture;
it's got a certain amount of fame to it.
It's from The Guide.
Can you talk about
what the circumstances were
when you took this?
EGGLESTON: Well, this man is dead.
He was murdered.
He was my great, close friend
and not a typical type.
For instance, I don't know why,
but this was his bedroom,
which he painted obviously with red paint
and no other color but the black spray.
And I would visit him frequently.
I suppose it's probably late at night,
probably sleepy, about to be bedtime.
We were talking
obviously about something;
he's scratching his head.
Very smart and always listened
to anything he had to say.
So, I miss him very much.
ALMEREYDA: What was his name?
EGGLESTON: Tom Boring.
He was a dentist.
ALMEREYDA: Maybe we can do
a big flashback and go to some of this
black-and-white work,
which is so different and distinctive.
What year is this?
How old were you when you took this?
EGGLESTON: This is '61, which means
when I was about college age.
It should say, "Parchman Prison,"
but it says instead,
"Parchman Plantation," which it was,
where they used prison labor
to farm-- cotton, actually.
And that land, my family land,
had a common border, no fence.
Just one row of cotton stopped
and another began.
Might say done, worked
by slave labor.
Mostly black.
That's in another county,
where I just was driving by.
This was in front of the commissary,
where they would gather for lunch break.
And this was either one of only
about two frames, probably.
ALMEREYDA: What's going on here?
EGGLESTON: That is just an ordinary,
small market.
The kind of place that evolved
into what's now called a 7-Eleven.
But this was just
a very modest grocery store.
And I don't know why I was in there.
Happened to be.
ALMEREYDA: Maybe you can talk
for a minute about the decision
to switch into color.
How did that hit you?
.
EGGLESTON: It never was
a conscious thing.
I had wanted to see a lot of things
in color because the world is in color.
I was affected by it all the time,
particularly certain times of the day
when the sun made things
really starkly stand out.
The one of the boy
with the grocery cart,
I point it out simply because
that was my first successful negative.
Tallahatchie is a county
in which the small town, Sumner, is.
And that was my uncle,
the man who married my mother's sister.
And the black man was one
of the servants that sort of raised me.
And they are both gone
from the Earth now,
but I was quite close to each one.
ALMEREYDA: I think this picture's
been written about a bit,
about the way they echo each other.
Can you talk about that a minute?
EGGLESTON: Well, someone
pointed out that when two people
live in the same house together
for a certain long period of time,
enough years, they start to,
not consciously,
but almost imitate each other.
Like in the way they're standing.
ALMEREYDA: Well, this picture
is so famous; you might as well
say something about it.
EGGLESTON: I was searching
around a pretty barren,
suburban neighborhood in Memphis
for no particular reason,
in a place I'm not familiar with.
And this is a row of typical houses.
And this was just sitting in the street
near the curb.
And I was sitting on the curb,
looking at it.
I was just a few feet away,
ten maybe at the most.
And rested the camera on the curb,
I think using something like my wallet
to cushion it.
ALMEREYDA: Do you remember
why you chose such a low angle?
EGGLESTON: Because I think
I had sense enough to know
that it was not so interesting
to stand at normal standing height
and look down at this thing.
So I got down level with it.
.