Customer Reviews

William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 (Whitney Museum of American Art)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sum: My favorite photo book of 2008

Pros:
* 227 Eggleston prints in vibrant color - I'm tempted to frame some.
* This large well-crafted hardbound book is a bargain at $40

Cons:
* Ugly cover
* 14-pages of the book cover a video from 1974 that has nothing to do with his main body of work.
* Erratic writing quality by 5 authors (why so many writers?)

Better writing about Eggleston can be found in the New Yorker. My favorite art critic Peter Schjeldahl writes:

"You can always tell a William Eggleston photograph. It's the one in color that hits you in the face and leaves you confused and happy, and perhaps convinces you that you don't understand photography nearly as well as you thought you did."

"He shoots like a shutterbug and executes like a painter."

In case you are wondering about the the use of the word "Democratic" in the title, it has notthing to do with politics. Instead it has to do with the way Eggleston picks the subjects he photographs. "I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around: that nothing was more important or less important."

I read in the New Yorker that Eggleston was having a retrospective at the Whitney and immediatly went on line to see if there was a catalogue. There was and I now have it and am happy that I do. His iconic images are here of course as well as many that I've never seen before. A wonderful collection of his work and one that I will share with my photo students at Palomar College in San Marcos, CA.

This is sort of a general reader or introduction to William Eggleston's photography meant to accompany the retrospective exhibition. Hopefully seeing some of the images in here will wet your appetite to look further into his work and pick up some of his classic books like Eggleston's Guide. None of the images from Paris are in here.

I was happy to add this to my collection of Eggleston Books, nice to finally have some of his earlier work in a book. The book is thick and and the pages very sturdy. Must have for collectors.

Unfortunately, this is a disappointing jumble of a book. It does not appropriately represent the work of Eggleston.