William Eggleston: 5X7

William Eggleston’s latest monograph features photographs taken during the early 1970s using a large format 5x7 camera. While the book includes imagery typical of the Eggleston oeuvre– streetscapes, parked automobiles, portraits of the strange and disenfranchised–the book also offers never-before-published photographs taken in the nightclubs Eggleston used to frequent. The afterward is written by Michael Almereyda.

With it [his camera and portable strobes] Eggleston could shoot in virtual darkness in the juke joints and clubs around Memphis. The portraits are offhand and spontaneous but insistently stark; their brutality is heightened by the absence of color. The portraits have a leveling effect–whether biker or debutante, the people Eggleston photographed are clearly denizens of the same realm. [He] is reminding us: look closely, each of these individuals is subtly different.
-Walter Hopps

Riveting as the sitters’ accoutrements are, most compelling is the way in which each person is at once magnifed–laid bare and vulnerable. . . . Staring, smiling, grimacing, glowering, these are less portraits of "individuals' than of the expressions that settle fleetingly on their malleable features. Each face feels stranger and more physically ambivalent than the next.
-Johanna Burton, Artforum