WILLIAM EGGLESTON'S GUIDE - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing

Eggleston, William (Photographer) & Szarkowski, John (Editor/Curator)

ISBN 10: 0870703781 / ISBN 13: 9780870703782

Published by New York City, NY: Museum Of Modern Art, 1976, 2002

About this Item

1st Printing. 112 pages. Published in 1976. Landmark collection of color photographs. One of the greatest art photography books of the 20th century. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the 2002 and 2011 Reissued Editions, which are themselves available in multiple subsequent printings. The First Edition is now rare. A brilliant production by Carl Laanes: Oversize-volume format. Black "pebbled" leatherette boards with a photographic reproduction pasted in front and gilt titles embossed on the cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by William Eggleston. Essay by John Szarkowski, one of the seminal essays on photography, not just Eggleston, ever written. Printed on pristine-white, glossy stock paper in the United States to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of the same apt name held at Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1976. Presents "William Eggleston's Guide". The ground-breaking and influential distillation of his pioneering work. Despite the ensuing controversy, the first all-color photography exhibition of the images in this volume achieved two things almost overnight: It immediately established Eggleston's reputation as the most important photographer working primarily in color (after initially and intermittently working in black-and-white). It also made color itself a now-widely-accepted medium for serious art photography (no mean feat at the time precisely because color, having become the dominant choice, commercially and vernacularly, since its invention was thereby largely ignored as facile by serious photographers). Like a prodigiously talented writer who needed a great editor to give his work shape, phrasing, and rhythm, Eggleston needed John Szarkowski, who deserves credit for being the book's full-fledged collaborator. He worked with Eggleston to edit 375 images down to 75 for the exhibition and 48 for the book. Color remains a significant artistic challenge to this day: Your eyes "de-focus", do not know - despite what you think - what to look for in a color photograph, especially a bad one. Every image in color is inherently "all over the place", distracted, as it were, rather than focussed. Eggleston, as described by Szarkowski, shows that to be an effective colorist, one must, intuitively or consciously, use color as a formal element, that is, be a formalist. The work of a brilliant contemporary photographer like Alec Soth is contained, not just implied, in this Guide, and not just because of their shared subject matter. "At once ordinary and spectacular, they look like someone's not particularly interesting snapshots until their matter-of-fact gorgeousness kicks in" (Vince Aletti). An absolute "must-have" title for William Eggleston collectors. This title is a great art photography book. This is one of few copies of the 1976 First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Precedes and should NOT be confused with the 2002 and 2011 Reissued Editions, which are themselves available in multiple subsequent printings. Copies available online have very serious flaws ("bowed", "slanted", "skewed", and so on) yet command hundreds of dollars. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. 48 color plates. "William Eggleston's Guide" was selected as one of the greatest photography books in "The Photobook". One of the greatest photographers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER WILLIAM EGGLESTON TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0870703781. Seller Inventory # 21602

Bibliographic Details

Title: WILLIAM EGGLESTON'S GUIDE - Rare Fine Copy ...

Publisher: New York City, NY: Museum Of Modern Art, 1976

Publication Date: 2002

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: None, As Issued

Signed: no

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

William Eggleston's Guide was the first one-man show of colour photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum's first publication of colour photography. The reception was divided and passionate. The book and show unabashedly forced the art world to deal with colour 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 person's Instamatic pictures from the family album. These photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of colour 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 superrefined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's home town 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 in flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle; the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, grey-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 colour separations from the original 35mm slides, producing a facsimile edition in which the colour will be freshly responsive to the photographer's intentions.

About the Author:

John Szarkowski is Director Emeritus of the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the author of numerous books and a photographer in his own right.