Artists

William Eggleston

Press release

Marking the 50th anniversary of William Eggleston's landmark exhibition and book William Eggleston's Guide (1976), this exhibition offers a fresh perspective on one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. A pioneer of colour photography, Eggleston (b.1939, Memphis, USA) is renowned for combining everyday observation with an intuitive sense of colour and composition. William Eggleston: All That Goes Unnoticed brings together many of his iconic works, alongside lesser-known images. Declaring himself as ‘at war with the obvious’, Eggleston’s democratic way of seeing redefined colour photography and transformed how the ordinary could be represented. Alongside his celebrated colour photographs and rarely seen vintage dye-transfer prints, the exhibition includes his lesser-known black-and-white and Brownie images from the early 1960s and 1970s. These early black-and-white images show the emergence of his legendary way of seeing and attentiveness to ordinary life, before colour became central to his photography. The roadside diners, suburban streets and domestic spaces of Eggleston’s photographs reveal a sense of isolation characteristic of his subjects. These classic photographs expose the underlying cracks of the American Dream – alienation, loneliness, desire – simultaneously seductive and lurid, tense and revealing. His photographs offer a slower, more attentive way of looking – a way of making the ordinary extraordinary. William Eggleston: All That Goes Unnoticed is organised by The Photographers’ Gallery, in partnership with the Wilson Centre for Photography