But the photos aren't about the locations. They are about color. And the main colors are red, white and blue.
If Eggleston's "...Guide" was photographed under the influence of the design of the Confederate flag (as Eggleston has claimed), then the framework and inspiration for this book are the colors of the American flag.
Robert Frank's monotone classic "Americans" had the underlying theme of the American flag. Eggleston's "Los Alamos" uses the colors of the flag as a motif. Shot over the years 1966 through 1974, there is a range of emotions within the photographs. There is cynicism--those were times ripe with cynicism--but there is also much found to admire in the American landscape at that time. Particularly the richness of the colors portrayed in the most banal and commonplace of subjects. In this arena, few photographic artists compare with William Eggleston.
It's clear to you that the beauty is all about the color, or is it? What's happening with the composition? Soemthing is at the tip of your tongue, but try as you might, you can't say what makes these pictures so obviously works of great genius.
When you calm back down and try to figure how a book of pictures that look almost like snapshots could sting you so hard, the accompanying essay by Thomas Weski gives the best account of Eggleston's work that I've seen to date---short, but clearer and more insightful than Janet Malcolm's meditation on color and snapshots in Diana and Nikon or Eudora Welty's introduction to The Democratic Forest.
Essays by Walter Hopps and Thomas Weski.
Hardcover, 11.75 x 11 in., 224 pages, 97 color illustrations