William Eggleston

Long before snapshot aesthetics became fashionable William Eggleston started to take pictures of his hometown Memphis, Tennessee. He discovered new and unexpected forms of beauty in the seemingly mundane surroundings of everyday life. Wistfully exploring his native South, he pioneered the use of color photography, which at the time had mainly been used for advertising and magazine work. This handsome book presents a long overdue survey of his luminous photographs spanning from 1967 to the present, drawn primarily from Eggleston's own archives. A kitchen sink, a country road, a girl lying in the grass: Eggleston's deceptively simple images reveal hitherto hidden and intricate pleasures of the visible world. In an insightful interview Eggleston recounts the development of his approach to photography, while the introductory essay by writer and curator Thomas Weski places Eggleston's work in the context of his contemporaries.