The Democratic Forest
The democracy of Eggleston's title referred to the principle he had been applying through which everything was represented equally by the lens. He recounted its origin after photographing the undergrowth by the roadside near Holly Springs, Mississippi. 'What have you been doing today, Eggleston?' someone asked. 'Photographing democratically,' he replied. The project, lasting several years, resulted in more than ten thousand prints and the publication of the book with an introduction by Eudora Welty in 1989.
Since all the work has equal status in The Democratic Forest, it is difficult to isolate single images, though the project contains magnificent photographs. The series, not the individual prints, constitutes the work. There are recurring motifs throughout. Telephone lines and automobiles amidst foliage reappear frequently. The cables bind the world together, linking the provinces of Eggleston's territory just as the automobiles provide the transportation. He travelled from Memphis out into Tennessee and his homelands in the Delta. Lengthy chapters occur in Miami, Pittsburgh, Dallas and New Orleans and as far as the Berlin Wall. The colors range from green spring landscapes to poisonous, hallucinatory nausea in New Orleans.
The book begins with a view of clouds over Mayflower County, Mississippi, his home, and ends over St. Louis at night, an electric green city. His view of the world below, strung together with lines of light, is that of the modern man in motion. He always thought of the sequence as symphonic in nature with quiet passages between grand themes. Radiating out from Memphis he could explore the whole world and encompass it all within The Democratic Forest.