Eggleston: Mystery of the Ordinary

A handsome overview of Eggleston’s evolution and legacy, from the early black-and-white work to his pioneering adventures in color

William Eggleston, along with Saul Leiter, Evelyn Hofer and Stephen Shore, was one of the first photographers to recognize the distinctive power of color and its unique capacity to create pictures that continuously challenge the everyday. He imbued banality with the uncanny and mysterious, investigating his immediate surroundings again and again―as if he were somehow suspicious of the contents of his freezer, the ketchup bottle on the diner counter, not to mention the guns that appear as if by chance in so many of his pictures. Mystery of the Ordinary captures the full scope of Eggleston’s evolution and legacy: from the early black-and-white work of the late 1950s, in which we witness his discovery and exploration of themes and unconventional croppings, to some of his most iconic color images.