The unseen chromes of legendary American photographer William Eggleston gives an interesting second view of his early work. Eggleston took 375 transparencies to show John Szarkowski at MoMA which he selected from a collection of around 5000. Szarkowski cut the number back to 75 for the seminal 1976 ‘William Eggleston’s Guide’ and reduced that number still further to 48 for the exhibition catalogue.
Thomas Weski has gone back to the roughly 5000 Kodachromes (there were a few Ektachromes and Agfachromes in among them) which Eggleston made between 1969 and 1974 and together with the photographer selected a further 364 images which have now been published by Steidl in a 3 volume collection aimed at wealthy collectors (UK £220.00, US $345.00, EC 248.00), Chromes – you can see around 14 pictures on the Steidl site and rather more here.
Mark Holborn wrote an introduction for Eggleston’s book ‘Ancient And Modern‘ which mentions perhaps his most famous image, Red Ceiling, which most will be familiar with. The final image of the slideshow on ‘Wallpaper’ linked above, the blue volume of the three, came as something of a surprise.
Moving cannonballs ?