Eggleston's work was exhibited at MoMA in 1976. Although this was well over a decade after MoMA had exhibited color photographs by Ernst Haas, the tale that the Eggleston exhibition was MoMA's first exhibition of color photography is frequently repeated, and the 1976 show is regarded as a watershed moment in the history of photography, by marking "the acceptance of colour photography by the highest validating institution" (in the words of Mark Holborn.).
Other photographers, such as Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, with whose works Eggleston was not familiar at the time, were also turning traditional standards upside down, by emphasizing their unconventionally formulated view of the world, similar to the subjectivized view developed by Robert Frank.
Eggleston had now reached the point at which he wanted to make his pictures public. He traveled to New York, where he visited John Szarkowski, the director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art. He had succeeded Edward Steichen in 1962 at the department, which was founded in 1940. In addition to reintroducing and reevaluating photography classics such as Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Walker Evans, who were all still living at the time of their aexhibitions, Szarkowski also presented younger photographers of whose importance he was convinced, because they were working on a new pictorial language.
The exhibition William Eggleston – Color Photographs opened in the early summer of 1976. Eggleston's exhibition was the first presentation of works by a color photographer after a hiatus of ten years. It attracted additional attention, for Szarkowski had referred to as Eggleston as the "discoverer of color photography" in several interviews.
http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=1690 MOMA (Date Accessed 22/03/15)
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