The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston (University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses Series)

The best part of this book is the symposium conversations between the participants concerning Eggleston's photography and history. The photographs that accompany the text are already familiar to those of us who have been following Eggleston's work for years or they are lesser works that add little to his reputation. For that reason, this is a book for people who are already Eggleston fans or those who are interested in research on the subject. For those who are only interested in the man's photography, there are many other excellent books out there. I enjoyed reading the text and seeing the photos but this book would have a limited audience.

The iconography is a little disappointing except for the cover photo .... the text of the symposium has some really interesting testimony ....if you want to know more on Bill Eggleston ....then you have like the rules of the market for the photo book edition .... a whole story .

When I initially received this book, I was disappointed by the selection of the photographs. However, over time I came to see this book as an interesting window into Eggleston's process. The photos presented here are taken from the collections of friends of the artist, so what one sees is not curated by an art historian or critic, but rather what caught the eye of Eggleston's friends. There are few of Eggleston's famous photographs here, and there are many "lesser" works in this collection that are nonetheless very interesting, as they show Eggleston's process of working through a location or subject. You get a sense, in looking at these pictures, of the photographer exploring a place through his camera, and instead of seeing the one great picture, you see the pictures that came before and after.

I had some good expectations for this book but in the end was disappointed. Half of the book is a selection of Eggleston’s photographs including a significant number from Bill Ferris’s private collection. The remainder of the book (about 70 pages) seems to be transcripts of symposiums and shorter writing about Eggleston and his work. Let’s just say that if you’re a fan of a conversational writing style you might like this book. On first skim the writing seemed to focus more on Ferris and his relationship with Eggleston which gives some insight into Eggleston but indirectly more about Ferris. It’s going to take some time to dig a bit deeper into the readings. Wouldn’t recommend this as the first Eggleston book to buy for your library but if you appreciate his work and want to read (a lot) more about it put it on the back burner for later.