One slipcase, ten books, 1328 pages and 1010 color photos, a sumptuous celebration of Bill Eggleston's creativity. My take on the democratic aspect is that the photos show everyday commonplace that is available for all to see but it takes a photographer of Eggleston's stature to see and capture the ordinary and make it visually fascinating.
I thought the books have two themes, hundreds of photos that could be called abstracts, where the frame is divided into hard edge sections, the corner of a building, a door and window, the curve of an auto, signage, a city street with buildings on either side and disappearing into the distance. The second theme, with a lot fewer images, is pastoral (and the title of book six) where Eggleston photographs nature, the hard edges evaporate, apart from the occasional tree trunk and a softer, irregular shape is captured. Though the nature photos tend to have a reduced color palette I thought the color was still as powerful as that in the man-made world photos.
The ten books do have a vague continuity which any reader would probably ignore after looking through them for the first time. My favorite is book four on Pittsburgh, I've looked through it far more than the other titles (perhaps to do with several visits I've made). As usual, I like to comment on the Steidl production. Open each book and the inside cover and the next two pages are pure white paper, the rest of the book is a slightly off-white or creamy matt art paper. Steidl does their best to choose a paper that they think is sympathetic to what will be printed on it (in this case with a 175 screen).
With the Democratic forest Eggleston delivers an extraordinary collection of photos and each time I look through any of the books I find something fresh I hadn't noticed before.
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