Coincidence?

William Eggleston (left), Chris Bonney (right), 2009

I don’t know William Eggleston personally. But like a lot of other people I’ve long appreciated his championing of color in fine art photography at a time when the powers than be didn’t give a lot of respect to photography, much less color photography. I do a lot of color photography, so I’m grateful that the work Mr. Eggleston did pioneering color photography may pay off decades later for hacks like me.

I thought that was the extent of our relationship. But now it seems we have another connection.

I’ve been experimenting with some of the iPhone painting applications for a few months. I’m not a painter. But I enjoy trying to make something interesting with my stubby fingers on the little iPhone screen. Most of these works are scribbles, things I do in a couple of minutes when I’m sitting waiting for something else to happen. I don’t think much about them.

Then the current issue of Aperture magazine showed up yesterday. And instead of an edgy photograph on the cover, there is a drawing that looks very much like something I would have done on the iPhone using Paintbrush or Inspire.

It turns out the drawings were done by William Eggleston. They are described in the article about them as “vibrant” and “alive.” Obviously, Eggleston gave more attention to his drawings than I do mine. But I couldn’t help but be impressed that we were thinking along similar lines.