Light in August

Light in August

Untitled (detail) (from the book William Eggleston: 2¼)

While William Eggleston hails from Memphis, Tennessee and William Faulkner from Lafayette County, Mississippi (of which the fictional Yoknapatawpha County is based in his writing), Eggleston's photos have come to define the American South as much as those of any other photographer (Eggleston's third book of photographs, Faulkner's Misssissippi, tightens the bond between the two artists).
The rectangular image on the cover of Faulkner's classic novel Light In August is a detail from an untitled and - as far as I can tell - undated square, medium-format photograph that appears third from last in the monograph William Eggleston: 2¼, first published in 1999*. The picture is suffused with the kind of light and shadow that we might expect to express the feeling of late summer.
The ornate, eccentric lettering used for the title of the novel was done by Jon Contino.



*Eggleston's color photographs are usually untitled and undated in publication. That said, judging from the vintage of the many cars and trucks in William Eggleston: 2¼, these square pictures were made in the mid to late 1970s.