内容简介

"William Eggleston's Guide" was the first one-man show of color photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum's first publication of color photography. The reception was divided and passionate. The book and show unabashedly forced the art world to deal with color photography, a medium scarcely taken seriously at the time, and with the vernacular content of a body of photographs that could have been but definitely weren't some average American's Instamatic pictures from the family album. These photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of color as an integral element of photographic composition. Bound in a textured cover inset with a photograph of a tricycle and stamped with yearbook-style gold lettering, the "Guide" contained 48 images edited down from 375 shot between 1969 and 1971 and displayed a deceptively casual, actually super-refined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes, and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's hometown of Memphis--an anonymous woman in a loudly patterned dress and cat's eye glasses sitting, left leg slightly raised, on an equally loud outdoor sofa; a coal-fired barbecue shooting up flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle, the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, gray-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only visible furniture is a shaded lamp on an end table. For this edition of "William Eggleston's Guide," The Museum of Modern Art has made new color separations from the original 35 mm slides, producing a facsimile edition in which the color will be freshly responsive tothe photographer's intentions.

精彩摘录

摄影实践是如此创作的：摄影师无法自由地重新安排他所拍摄主题中的各个要素，以适合他对该主题先入为主的想法来构建一张照片，而画家在作画时却是可以的。相反，摄影师是在其媒介所提供的各种可能性之中寻找他的拍摄主题。如果一片广袤无垠的风景无法尽收于取景框之中，摄影师便会设法选取一种不同却有辅助之效的主题，比如可能拍下两棵树和一块石头。

——引自第7页

人们可以说在这些照片中形式和内容无法剥离——也就是说，这些照片精确地表达它们所欲呈现之义。试图将这些似是而非的图像翻译成文字很明显是愚蠢之人的行径，不会有两个愚蠢之人选择相同的无法让人满意的说辞。比如，试着解释本画册第75页上的那张照片。不妨把它当作一张描绘分界线的照片：城市与乡村、文明与荒野之间的分界线，社区与自由之间的零界点，克制的反抗或是谨慎的冒险之间的边界，以及新旧事物之间的分界线，不断扩展到古老土地的新街坊，但该街坊本身又不如去年那么新颖，前景的房屋不再是这条线上最后一栋，还有停在该房屋门口处的1956年款别克轿车已到中年，依旧光亮，保养很好，且运作正常，拿得出手，但已不再年轻。还有切分白天和夜晚的晨昏线，此时，冷蓝色调的薄暮正慢慢变成厚重的晕影和暖黄色；此时，白天互不干涉的公众生活也与夜间私人的社区生活开始分野；此时，家人们开始重又聚集在祖传的屋檐之下，街上传来正在呼喊着自家孩子名字的女人声音。这样的解读可能会损害照片，只能对非常轻信的年轻人形成影响，同时，也可能会使其他人在没有文字的辅助下，更为持久地观看照片。但是，文字的含义与照片的意义充其量并行不悖，如同两条不会相交的思考线索；如果我们关注的是照片中的意义，言语的描述终将徒劳无益。

——引自第12页