Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Assembled by art critic Chandes, this volume was published to accompany a French exhibition of the work of American photographer William Eggleston. The photographs he produces sanctify the mundane while honoring and holding forever the inconsequential moment. This large, word-free collection contains some of his best old (1970s) and new photography. The idea that life, land, cars, small buildings, and clusters of people are assembled in bunches at random, in the accidental reality of a time and place, seen and framed and preserved by a photographer, helps all of us grasp the value of looking and trying to understand the world's visual chaos. When Eggleston photographs a '65 Buick that inexplicably ran up a concrete drainage wall only to be partially crushed and wedged under a highway overpass, we think, "That's amazing." But his expanded photo of the wreck through a wide-angle lens shows nearby bell-bottomed onlookers placed in no order with no apparent purpose but detached from the wreck by the onset of the immediate boredom common to the ordinary moment. Eggleston is the master of the moment. The only complaint here is that every one of the 146 photographs reproduced is titled Untitled. We need to know the words the photographer attaches to some of these preserved situations. Recommended.-David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.