Szarkowski, John: William Eggleston's Guide

New York: Museum of Modern Art, (1976). Small quarto, original black leatherette gilt, with color plate mounted on cover.

1976 First edition of Eggleston’s first photobook, the groundbreaking first MoMA book of color photography, with 48 color photographic plates, an excellent copy wrapped in mylar.

“One of the seminal photobooks… William Eggleston’s Guide has irrevocably changed the way in which we look at the world of photographs… marking the beginning of another type of stream-of-consciousness photography [and] the birth of color photography, or more accurately, the moment when it was perceived as artistically respectable” (Parr & Badger I: 265). “By all accounts, William Eggleston’s Guide and the 1976 MoMA exhibition it accompanied were milestones in the history of color photography” (Roth, 234) . In images “at once modest and monumental, vulgar and refined, ordinary and strange, prosaic and poetic, commonplace and unforgettable… William Eggleston’s Guide… defined the potential vocabulary of color” (Parr & Badger I:265, II:290). With essay by John Szarlowski. As issued without dust jacket. Open Book, 308.