William Eggleston, 2 1/4 [Hardcover]

William Eggleston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 3, 2008

Born and raised in Mississippi and Tennessee, William Eggleston began taking pictures during the 1960s after seeing Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment. In 1966 he changed from black and white to color film, perhaps to make the medium more his own and less that of his esteemed predecessors. John Sarkowski, when he was curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, called Eggleston the "first color photographer," and certainly the world in which we consider a color photograph as art has changed because of Eggleston. From 1966 to 1971, Eggleston would occasionally use a two and one quarter inch format for photographs. These are collected and published here for the first time, adding more classic Eggleston images to photography's color canon.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 101 pages
• Publisher: Twin Palms Publishers (December 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0944092705
• ISBN-13: 978-0944092705
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 11.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #267,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beg, borrow, buy or steal this book, November 1, 2001

By 

Gary Bowden "Gary Bowden" (Fredericton) - See all my reviews

This review is from: William Eggleston, 2 1/4 (Hardcover)

I've looked at thousands of photo books in my life and this is one of my personal favorites. Why? It isn't, for the most part, because of the subject matter. Eggleston's images are pretty banal -- common everyday objects that we routinely ignore. I like this book because it shows an undisputed master dealing simultaneously with two photographic problems -- color and a square image format. Even if you don't agree with Szarkowski's assertion that Eggleston was the first photographer to actually see in color (in contrast to the emphasis upon form and texture that characterizes black and white photography), there is no disputing the originality of his vision and the influence that it has had on subsequent generations of photographers. The images in this book, from early in his career, beautifully display that vision. But, unlike any of his other photographs, the ones in this book are square. Most photographs are reproduced in rectangular format, providing them with a natural visual tension. Faced with a square format, many photographers opt for symmetry as a compositional strategy. Not Eggleston -- he uses color to create disproportionate visual weights and add a visual dynamic to the images. For a nice contrast, compare the images in this book to those in Larry Fink's Social Graces (black and white photos in the 2 1/4 format) to appreciate the difference between using color (Eggleston) and non-symmetric form (Fink) to get rid of the structural monotony of the square image format. Finally, this book is an absolute delight to hold. The pages and cover, as with most other Twin Palms books, provide tactile pleasures a quantum leap beyond those in 98% of other books.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Washed out, December 20, 1999

By 

Robert Fagan (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: William Eggleston, 2 1/4 (Hardcover)

I've viewed this book side by side with the Hasselblad Award Book, and I find the quality of the printing in 2 1/4 to be inferior to that in the Hasselblad volume. I think the selection of the photos is excellent, but the reproductions in this particular book are somewhat washed out. With an artist such as Eggleston,the color printing process is essential to communicating his vision. I found the quality of the printing in this book to be a disservice to his art.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fine addition to the Eggleston catalog, March 9, 2000

By 

Geoffrey P. Smith "opusposthum" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: William Eggleston, 2 1/4 (Hardcover)

This is a beautiful book, and those familiar with the photographer's work over the years will recognize his visual flair for color and love of the mystery in commonplace objects. In response to the previous reviewer, who was disappointed with the quality of image reproduction, I think the problem lies in the aging of the source negatives and/or transparencies...the sad but inevitable changes wrought by time. Twin Palms has done a fine job with this volume of early work by a master photogarapher.