Eggleston, William. 2 and 1/4. Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers, 1999.
Excerpts from “William Eggleston, Mystagogue” by Bruce Wagner, in the introduction to 2 and 1/4:
… We can speak of the nature and theory of photography, its philosophy, its formality and offhandedness, the random solemnity and theorem of arbitrary borders and cropped fields; we can even speak of the fabled, magical mundaneness of Mr. Eggleston’s cars–some bright, some husks–and merciless, merciless facades, his unapologetic faces and deadpan dogs, his bright-dark trees and monolithic, colored, geomantic vision (colors at once faded and vivid), urban and country. but what do these things tell us, collectively? These sharecropped fields, these flat, sacred landscapes? Are they sorrowful images? Are we already dead, looking at them?
… There is more than mere utilitarian mystery in power lines and obsolescent vats. And there are people, too, neither sad nor ironic–like everything captured by Mr. Eggleston’s expeditionary eye, like everything he sees, they are heartbreaking and indifferent then we are heartbreaking and indifferent, watching them. [...]