[Photobook] [Exhibition Catalog] Election Eve

Washington, D. C.: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1977. Limited Edition. Stiff Wrappers. Fine. From an edition of 2,000, with photographs by William Eggleston, preface by Lloyd Fonvielle, and essay by Jane Livingston. Also includes an exhibition checklist, full-page map of Sumter County, Ga., showing locations where photographs were taken, and brief biography and bibliography. Oblong 8vo (202 x 280mm): [16]pp, including three tipped-in color plates. Stapled stiff French blue wrappers printed in black. In 1976, Rolling Stone magazine commissioned Eggleston to photograph Plains, Georgia, birthplace and hometown of presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. The project became the first of Eggleston's books of photographs and the subject of this exhibition of 100 type-c photographs at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington, D. C., from December 10, 1977 to January 22, 1978. The photobook, published by Caldecot Chubb, in New York, in an edition of just five numbered copies and two lettered artist's proofs (reissued, in a trade edition, by Steidl, in 2017) was not only Eggleston's first, but his most elaborate, containing one-hundred original prints in two leather-bound volumes housed in a linen box. Eggleston made these photographs in and around Plains—and along the route of his journey there from Memphis—on the eve of the 1976 Presidential election. When he crossed the border into Sumter County, he circled Plains warily, photographing the outlying countryside and the nearby fields and villages. "His reluctance to zero in too hastily on Carter's hometown was an indication, partly, of his purpose in making this series of images. He wanted to record Plains in the true context of its life as a Southern town: as a tiny way station on roads leading to other, more vital places, as the hub of a very small agricultural wheel. And this he has done . . . These photographs show us a place strikingly different from the one whose image was so carefully edited and construed for us by the media." (from the Preface). N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).