William Eggleston's Guide

William Eggleston's (American, 1939 - ) photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of color as an integral element of photographic composition. Originally published in 1976, William Eggleston's Guide is bound in a textured cover inset with a photograph of a tricycle and stamped with yearbook-style gold lettering. It contains 48 images edited down from 375 shot between 1969 and 1971 and displayed a deceptively casual, actually super-refined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's hometown 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 flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle, the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, gray-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only