Preface by Lloyd Fonvielle. Afterword by Caldecot Chubb.
"On the eve of the election, when nothing had yet been decided, when everything—whatever that everything was—hung in the balance, Eggleston made an elegy … a statement of perfect calm." —Lloyd Fonvielle
In 1977 William Eggleston released Election Eve, his first and most elaborate artist’s book, containing 100 original prints in two leatherbound volumes, housed in a linen box. It was published by Caldecot Chubb in New York in an edition of only five, and has since become Eggleston’s rarest collectible book. This new Steidl edition recreates the full original sequence of photos in a single volume, making it available to the wider public for the first time. Election Eve contains images made in October 1976 during Eggleston’s pilgrimage from Memphis to the small town of Plains, Georgia, the home of Jimmy Carter who in November 1976 was elected 39th President of the United States. Eggleston began photographing even before he left Memphis and depicted the surrounding countryside and villages of Sumter County, before he reached Plains. His photos of lonesome roads, train tracks, cars, gas stations and houses are mostly empty of people and form an intuitive, unsettling portrait of Plains, starkly different from the idealized image of it subsequently promoted by the media. The book includes a preface by Hollywood screenwriter (The Mummy, 1999), director (Gotham, 1988) and author Lloyd Fonvielle.
"Sumter" (1976) is reproduced from 'William Eggleston: Election Eve.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The Daily Beast
Malcolm Jones
William Eggleston's portraits of rural Georgia on the eve of Jimmy Carter's election capture the calm before the storm.
Boston Globe
Mark Feeney
Election Eve offers human handiwork in abundance.
L'Oeil de la Photographie
In 1977 William Eggleston released Election Eve, his first and most elaborate artist’s book, containing 100 original prints in two leather-bound volumes housed in a linen box. It was published by Caldecot Chubb in New York in an edition of only five, and has since become Eggleston’s rarest collectible book. This new Steidl edition recreates the full original sequence of photos in a single volume, making it available to the wider public for the first time. Election Eve contains images made in October 1976 during Eggleston’s pilgrimage from Memphis to the small town of Plains, Georgia, the home of Jimmy...
Financial Times
Chris Allnut
Carter remains the only Democratic candidate since 1964 to have secured victory in a majority of the southern states. Forty-four years on from its original publication — and two months before US voters return to the polls — the republication of Election Eve points to an America that candidates would do well not to forget.
On the Seawall
Mark Athitakis
[Eggleston's] images are often gorgeous, but strangely so — he has a knack for decoupling gas pumps and mailboxes and house porches from their status as symbols and making them into simply attractive objects in themselves [...] He makes things strange so we can see things new [...] His job — his risk — was to scrub the meaning from the world so completely that making sense of it, bringing order to it, choosing its direction, is a task that’s left to the viewer. In an election, that job was always ours anyway.
Art Newspaper
Jose Da Silva
With the one of the most polarising US presidential election campaigns coming to an end in just under a fortnight, the serene images taken in the run-up to another presidential election 44 years ago seem like they come from a different planet.
Art Newspaper
Jose da Silva
With the one of the most polarising US presidential election campaigns coming to an end in just under a fortnight, the serene images taken in the run-up to another presidential election 44 years ago seem like they come from a different planet.
Coldtype
In sharp contrast to the insane aggression of the current election campaign [...], Eggleston’s photos of lonesome roads, train tracks, cars, gas stations and houses show an air of Southern tranquility. This new edition recreates the original sequence of photos in a single volume, making it available to the wider public for the first time
Paris Review
Jonah Goldman Kay
The photographs in Election Eve emit an eerie quiet—a town on the precipice of transforming from a provincial backcountry to a presidential hometown. [...] Not just a document of Plains as it stood on Election Day 1976—rather, Eggleston captured the uncertainty of its residents, the tremendous stakes. As we await the results of the current election, the stakes feel just as high, if not higher.
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“Bank parking lot, Plains” is reproduced from William Eggleston: Election Eve,Steidl’s superb volume gathering 100 photographs that Eggleston shot in and around Plains, Georgia (en route from Mississippi), just prior to the 1976 Presidential election, when Democrat Jimmy Carter of Georgia defeated incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford from Michigan. “On the eve of the election, when nothing had yet been decided, when everything—whatever that everything was—hung in the balance, Eggleston made an elegy … a statement of perfect calm,” Lloyd Fonvielle writes. “To say, however, that these photographs are romantic, sorrowful and quiet is not to imply that they are easy or in any sense comforting. They are richer and more sensual in some ways than Eggleston’s other work, but they are not less penetrating or unsettling. In them Eggleston seems bent, as always, on recording those unremarked units of spatial perception by which the everyday world is unconsciously ordered.” continue to blog
Election Eve, William Eggleston’s first artist’s book, was published as an edition of only five in October of 1977. It contained one hundred original prints in two leather-bound volumes housed in a linen box. To this day, it remains Eggleston’s rarest collectible book. Luckily for us, Steidl has remedied the situation with this new trade edition, released this week and set to sell out by the next. On a printed insert included with the book, original publisher Caldecot Chubb tells the story of how the first edition came about. He concludes, “My mother, when we knelt on the living room rug at home and I showed her the two enormous volumes and the pictures in them, thought I’d done something wonderful. I was 27 when I published Election Eve and had no real idea how lucky I was. I know now.” continue to blog
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FORMAT: Hbk, 13 x 9.75 in. / 216 pgs / 100 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $80.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $115 ISBN: 9783958292666 PUBLISHER: Steidl AVAILABLE: 12/26/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
"On the eve of the election, when nothing had yet been decided, when everything—whatever that everything was—hung in the balance, Eggleston made an elegy … a statement of perfect calm." —Lloyd Fonvielle
Published by Steidl. Preface by Lloyd Fonvielle. Afterword by Caldecot Chubb.
In 1977 William Eggleston released Election Eve, his first and most elaborate artist’s book, containing 100 original prints in two leatherbound volumes, housed in a linen box. It was published by Caldecot Chubb in New York in an edition of only five, and has since become Eggleston’s rarest collectible book. This new Steidl edition recreates the full original sequence of photos in a single volume, making it available to the wider public for the first time.
Election Eve contains images made in October 1976 during Eggleston’s pilgrimage from Memphis to the small town of Plains, Georgia, the home of Jimmy Carter who in November 1976 was elected 39th President of the United States. Eggleston began photographing even before he left Memphis and depicted the surrounding countryside and villages of Sumter County, before he reached Plains. His photos of lonesome roads, train tracks, cars, gas stations and houses are mostly empty of people and form an intuitive, unsettling portrait of Plains, starkly different from the idealized image of it subsequently promoted by the media. The book includes a preface by Hollywood screenwriter (The Mummy, 1999), director (Gotham, 1988) and author Lloyd Fonvielle.
