Eggleston at Victoria Miro

Through William Eggleston’s lens the inside of a freezer takes on a surreal beauty. Stacked with ‘Purity Party Ice’, the ice on its walls has a fur-like, tactile quality. Eggleston – who has captured the details of seemingly ordinary objects and places all over the world in his 60-year career – is originally from Memphis, Tennessee, and these new images were taken in locations ranging from St Petersburg to New Jersey. Wherever he is, Eggleston seems to have favourite locations and subjects – dumpsters, street corners, weird interiors – but his sense of colour and detail makes them compelling and beautiful, not grotty.

Eggleston has been described as the ‘father of colour photography’; his use of colour was ground-breaking at a time when black-and-white was the norm for art photography, and colour was generally only used in advertising, journalism or family snapshots. In many of the images in this show, the colours pop and contrast boldly, creating an exciting effect: a red dumpster against an orange wall, a turquoise mattress against a lilac, graffitied backdrop.

There’s also a strong sense of surreal humour. One photograph shows a waving Santa suspended in the sky, above a ‘Hub Cap City’ sign. But the fingered initials in the corner of the picture point out that he’s actually a sticker on a dusty window.

There’s a stillness about Eggleston’s work too as he captures traces of human life: a sparkling spoon on a windowsill, interiors without their inhabitants. A smudgy image of dresses in a shop window reminded me of Edward Hopper’s isolated American scenes. 

In another photograph a faded newspaper lies on the arid Californian ground. The exposed page  shows two women looking out toward Shanghai’s new skyscrapers. A picture in a picture, a city on the sand, skyscrapers among the grass – or perhaps a new frontier. Eggleston’s work feels natural, unplanned, and undeniably influential. It makes you want to look, to immerse yourself in the scenes he’s captured, and find the elusive way he has of making ‘ordinary’ things unusual and beautiful. In short, to be able to go out on the street and see it as Eggleston does.

William Eggleston: 21st Century runs until Saturday 27 February at:

Victoria Miro Gallery
16 Wharf Road
Islington
N1 7RW

Tuesdays to Saturdays 10am-6pm