These days, when Instagramming lunch is something of a national pastime, it’s hard to imagine that photographing the everyday was ever controversial. But it was an artistic no-go well into the ’60s, when US photographer William Eggleston caused a stir with his pictures of offbeat and ordinary moments, many captured in glorious colour. This month, London’s National Portrait Gallery brings together 100 works in the most comprehensive exhibition of his portraits ever. Spanning his career, they range from huge, vivid prints taken in Mississippi (a woman smoking on her garden lounger, say) to previously unseen black-and-white scenes of life in his hometown of Memphis, played out in diners, markets and gas stations – a fascinating window on the changing face of the American South.
An untitled 1960s William Eggleston photo at the National Portrait Gallery
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