William Eggleston, Mystery of the Ordinary
By Charlotte Stace
Widely regarded as one of the fathers of colour photography, having achieved recognition in art galleries and museums in the 1970s, Memphis-born William Eggleston is one of the most influential names in contemporary photography.
Influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive instant”, by Robert Frank and Eugène Atget, and after his initial work in black and white around the suburbs of Memphis, Eggleston began to photograph everything around him with a clear artistic intention and in colour, as if with his images he sought to reveal the aesthetic potential of the quotidian: old shoes, freezers with food, the inside of a bathroom, a woman’s legs, a road sign, an old truck, a tree, and so on.
Mystery of the Ordinary is one of the most representative exhibitions of this exceptional photographer’s work to date in Spain. Organised chronologically, this extensive anthology includes his early black-and-white work and his entire subsequent career in colour from 1965 onwards.