William Eggleston - Notable Publications

Notable Publications

The earliest commercial use of Eggleston's art was on album covers for the Memphis group Big Star, with whom Eggleston recorded for the album Third/Sister Lovers and who used the famous Red Ceiling image on their album Radio City. Later records also had other Eggleston images, including the dolls on a Cadillac hood featured on the cover of the classic Alex Chilton album Like Flies on Sherbert. The Primal Scream album Give out But Don't Give Up features a cropped photograph of a neon confederate flag and a palm tree by Eggleston. In 1994, Eggleston allowed his long-time friend and fellow photographer Terry Manning to use two Eggleston photographs for the front and back covers of the CD release of Christopher Idylls, an album of ethereal acoustic guitar music produced by Manning and performed by another Eggleston friend, Gimmer Nicholson.

In 2006, a William Eggleston image was coincidentally used as both the cover to Primal Scream's single "Country Girl" and the paperback edition of Ali Smith's novel The Accidental. The same picture had already been used on the cover of Chuck Prophet's Age of Miracles album in 2004.

In 2001, William Eggleston's photograph "Memphis (1968)" was used as the cover of Jimmy Eat World's top-selling album Bleed American. Eggleston's photos also appear on Tanglewood Numbers by the Silver Jews, Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band by Joanna Newsom and Transference by Spoon.

Eggleston published a body of work in 2003 titled "Los Alamos" (Zurich: Scalo) which featured his photographs from 1966 to 1974. According to the introduction by Walter Hopps, the title for the book was derived from Eggleston's desire to have his own secret lab.