William Eggleston
and Berlin

„... and as soon as I arrived for the first time in Berlin, 
I felt at home.“ – William Eggleston
 

C/O Berlin will show an extensive retrospective of William Eggleston in 2023 and is preparing for it with a round table symposium, the results of which will be included in a publication. According to the fishbowl principle, the participants in the inner circle discuss while those in the outer circle listen. If a chair becomes free in the inner circle, a person from the outer circle can join the discussion. 

Since the early 1980s, William Eggleston was a regular visitor in Berlin – often his stays were financed by Amerika Haus, then part of the American Embassy, which is now the location of C/O Berlin. The largely unexplored works of Eggleston will be discussed at the symposium with experts and companions of the pioneer of color photography. What influence did his pictures have on the establishment of color photography as an artistic medium in Germany and Europe?

At the same time, Eggleston's Berlin pictures provide an insight into the state of Berlin during the Cold War at the beginning of the 1980s and are thus part of the city's visual history. On the basis of an international panel, historical perspectives will be linked for the first time with current questions on New Color Photography. 

Since 2005, C/O Berlin has had a focus on color photography in its program. Photography and color has been presented in numerous exhibitions by photographers such as Evelyn Hofer . Moments of Eternity (2005), Fred Herzog . Photographs (2010), Joel Sternfeld . Retrospective (2012), Stephen Shore . Retrospective (2016), Joel Meyerowitz . Why Color? (2017). Over and over again, the field has been examined for Germany on the basis of academic contributions – as is now the case with the symposium William Eggleston and Berlin, which will be moderated by Felix Hoffmann, chief curator at C/O Berlin. 

Participants
Gosbert Adler, Artist, Belin
Joachim Brohm, Artist and Professor, Leipzig
Christine Frisinghelli, Former Editor-in-Chief Camera Austria, Graz
Volker Heinze, Artist, Essen
Virginia Heckert, Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Jörg Sasse, Artist, Berlin
Thomas Weski, Foundation for Photography and Media Art/
Michael Schmidt Archive, Berlin
Manfred Willmann, Artist, Graz