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.

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