William Eggleston's Guide [FACSIMILE] (Hardcover)

by John Szarkowski (Author), William Eggleston (Photographer)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
William Eggleston's Guide was the first one-man show of color photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum's first publication of color photography. The reception was divided and passionate. The book and show unabashedly forced the art world to deal with color photography, a medium scarcely taken seriously at the time, and with the vernacular content of a body of photographs that could have been but definitely weren't some average American's Instamatic pictures from the family album. These photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of color as an integral element of photographic composition. Bound in a textured cover inset with a photograph of a tricycle and stamped with yearbook-style gold lettering, the Guide contained 48 images edited down from 375 shot between 1969 and 1971 and displayed a deceptively casual, actually super-refined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes, and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's hometown of Memphis--an anonymous woman in a loudly patterned dress and cat's eye glasses sitting, left leg slightly raised, on an equally loud outdoor sofa; a coal-fired barbecue shooting up flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle, the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, gray-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only visible furniture is a shaded lamp on an end table. For this edition of William Eggleston's Guide, The Museum of Modern Art has made new color separations from the original 35 mm slides, producing a facsimile edition in which the color will be freshly responsive to the photographer's intentions.

[These] pictures are like no one else's. At once ordinary and spectacular, they look like someone's not particularly interesting snapshots until their matter-of-fact beauty and gorgeousness kick in. --Vince Aletti
As pictures, these seem to me perfect. . .collectively a paradigm of a private view. . .described here with clarity, fullness and elegance. --John Szarkowski

Essay by John Szarkowski.

Hardcover, 9 x 9 in., 112 pages, 48 color and 1 b&w

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York

About the Author
Born in 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, William Eggleston works as a photographer in his home state and in Washington, D.C. He has been a lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, a researcher in color video at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, and a recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Arts Survey.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Facsimile edition edition (October 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870703781
• ISBN-13: 978-0870703782
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 9.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #30,048 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent re-release., October 24, 2003

By	Dr. Filthy McNasty (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

For those of you who already know Eggleston, there is something in particular to note about this book. I also purchased Eggleston's "The Hasselblad Award 1998," which features a handful of the same shots in Guide. This provided me an opportunity to compare the same shots in two different publications. There is absolutely no comparison to the superior quality of the prints in William Eggleston's Guide. In fact, shots that I loved in Guide I would not have even really noticed in Hasselblad (very poor color separation, blue tints, etc.). This is the book to get.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bill's artful snapshots, April 7, 2003

By	Robin Benson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

William Eggleston's photos grow on you. Look through this book for the first time and the contents seem a bit like ordinary snapshots but look again and then again and with each viewing the images become more familiar (still with something fresh to discover each time) but now they start to blend together seamlessly. One reason for this, I think, is that the photos capture the everyday and the ordinary. Taken around Eggleston's hometown of Memphis and in the Deep South, they show some of his relations, street scenes, interiors, buildings and more, though the captions only state the locations. John Szarkowski says in the books introduction "..today's most radical and suggestive color photography derives much of its vigor from commonplace models" This capturing of the everyday and in color divided the critics in 1976 when the Museum of Modern Art used seventy-five of Egglestons's images for their first exhibition of color photography. The 'Guide' unfortunately only shows forty-eight from the show.

Art photography until this exhibition was in black and white and had been for years, color photos were mostly for ads, commercial print and snapshots. Thankfully the Museum's curator of photography, Szarkowski, had the good sense to allow the public to see something new and fresh. I think the 'Guide' is a good introduction to Eggleston and if you like his creative vision, as I do, have a look at these two books of his work:The Democratic Forest and Ancient & Modern. Both are full of wonderful color photos of the American everyday.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the original, April 24, 2006

By	jack kerr (lowell) - See all my reviews

this is where color photography became art, and it is the MOST influential color work done to date. what can you say about this work except that if you are a photography student, lover, practitioner, or simple fan, you must own this book. this is the one folks, where it all began. giving it stars seems silly, but if ever there was a 5 star book, this is it.