“The Dreaming Long View and the Arresting Close-Up”: The Eggleston Cultural Center on South Main Street, Memphis

The work of two of the South’s preeminent artists — one an author, the other a photographer — converge to form the thesis of this project. The internationally recognized photographer William Eggleston (b. 1939) was born and resides in Memphis, Tennessee, which is at times the subject of his art. Eudora Welty (1909- 2001), of nearby Jackson, Mississippi, is one of the great 20thcentury authors that the South produced; she stands among the southern pantheon alongside Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor. Welty observed of Eggleston’s work:

All the photographs have place as their subject. ...In landscapes, cityscapes, street scenes, roadside scenes, at every sort of public converging-point, in dreaming long view and arresting close-up, through hours of dark and light, he sets forth what makes up our ordinary world (Welty 9-10).

Cutting to the heart of the matter, Welty’s take on Eggleston’s work offers insight and provocation for an architectural response. Borrowing Welty’s words, the programming of a museum and archive enables a “close-up” examination of the museum typology and its methods of display. Furthermore, by considering the city of Memphis, the museum can be situated within the “long view” of the city’s urban fabric and shifting narrative. By relating program and site, this thesis includes the design of a museum that reaches beyond its primary role of preserving photographs. As Welty explains,

The human being — the perpetrator of or the victim or the abandoner of what we see before us — is the reason why these photographs of place have their power to move and disturb us; they always let us know that the human being is the reason they were made (Welty 11).

Within this characterization of Eggleston’s subject matter is an architectural opportunity. In order to form a place that similarly “moves,” architectural methods that reveal and frame human interaction will be explored. The passage of time provides another common theme in the production of architecture, photography, and place. In summation, I intend to pursue this program and site to see how time, narrative, and place may enrich architectural production.