Description: A selection of nearly one hundred previously unseen images from the 1960s and 1970s by the pioneer of color photography, William Eggleston.
The Outlands, a series of photographs taken by Eggleston between 1969 and 1974, establishes the groundbreaking visual themes and lexicon that the artist would continue to develop for decades to come. The work offers a journey through the mythic and evolving American South, seen through the artist's lens: vibrant colors and a profound sense of nostalgia echo throughout Eggleston's breathtaking oeuvre. His motifs of signage, cars, and roadside scenes create an iconography of American vistas that inspired a generation of photographers. With its in-depth selection of unforgettable images--a wood-paneled station wagon, doors flung open, parked in an expansive rural setting; the artist's grandmother in the moody interior of their family's Sumner, Mississippi home--The Outlands is emblematic of Eggleston's dynamic, experimental practice. The breadth of work reenergizes his iconic landscapes and forms a new perspective of the American South in transition. Accompanying the ninety brilliant Kodachrome images and details, a literary, fictional text by the critically acclaimed author Rachel Kushner imagines a story of hitchhikers trekking through the Deep South. New scholarship by Robert Slifkin reframes the art-historical significance of Eggleston's oeuvre, proposing affinities with work by Marcel Duchamp, Dan Graham, Jasper Johns, and Robert Smithson. A foreword by William Eggleston III offers important insights into the process of selecting and sequencing this series of images.Brief description: Over the course of nearly six decades, William Eggleston has established a singular pictorial style that deftly combines vernacular subject matter with an innate and sophisticated understanding of color, form, and composition. His photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning. His 1976 solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by John Szarkowski, marked one of the first presentations of color photography at the museum. Although initially criticized for its unfamiliar approach, the show and its accompanying catalogue, William Eggleston's Guide, heralded an important moment in the medium's acceptance within the art-historical canon, and it solidified the artist's position as one of its foremost practitioners to date. Eggleston's work continues to exert an influence on contemporary visual culture at large.
Review Quotes: "Featuring photographs from the 60s and 70s, this colourful tome offers a rare glimpse into the visionary's mythic and evolving American South--all the while making for the perfect coffee table book."-- "i-D"