We see thousands of different images a day and ourselves snap dozens – with smart phones enabling us to be our own art directors – and yet the unplanned, un-posed and impulsive photo is something we rarely appreciate. Selfies reign supreme.
Similarly when we go to a photography exhibition we half expect there to be some grand, overarching theme to justify the, relatively modern, medium alongside oil painting and sculpture.
Hence the simplicity and open narratives of William Eggleston's work is utterly seductive. Photographing throughout the 1960s and 1970s Eggleston found extreme colour and mystery in what appear to be stories he's just happened upon.
“I wanted to make a picture that could stand on its own, regardless of what it was a picture of,” wrote Eggleston. “I’ve never been a bit interested in the fact that this was a picture of a blues musician or a street corner.”
From fields of flowers to girls conspiring on street corners, Egglestons' images all feel like – very technically skilled – stills from films you'll never see.
The National Portrait Gallery's exhibition displays 100 works surveying Eggleston's full career from the 1960s to the present day.
www.npg.org.uk
