A new exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery in London, William Eggleston: All That Goes Unnoticed, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the photographer's landmark 1976 show and book William Eggleston's Guide. Running from 14 October 2026 until 21 February 2027, the show examines Eggleston's legacy, influence and 60-year career, bringing together many of his iconic works alongside lesser-known images.
Born in Memphis in 1939, Eggleston is renowned for combining everyday observation with an intuitive sense of colour and composition. Declaring himself 'at war with the obvious', his democratic way of seeing redefined colour photography and transformed how the ordinary could be represented.
Everyday scenes and the American South
Eggleston's domestic scenes, including the abandoned child's tricycle, red ceiling and green bathroom, will be on show, alongside the sweeping landscapes, highways and skies of the American south. For Eggleston, colour was never merely aesthetic; it was the fabric of postwar American life, imbued with commercial desire and social significance. One image on display was used on the cover of Memphis band Big Star's second album Radio City.
The roadside diners, suburban streets and domestic spaces of his photographs reveal a sense of isolation characteristic of his subjects. These classic shots expose the underlying cracks of the American dream – alienation, loneliness, desire – simultaneously seductive and lurid, tense and revealing. In his images of the day-to-day, from burger bars, supermarkets and petrol stations, to the American icons of Graceland, Coca-Cola and Cadillac, Eggleston gave everything equal weight.
A son's memories
All quotes in the exhibition were supplied exclusively for The Guardian by William Eggleston III, the photographer's son. He said: 'Dad generally never talked about his own photographs. When asked about them he would reply: "If I wanted to say something, I wouldn't have taken the photograph"'.
Asked about his favourite work, Eggleston III said: 'I do not have a favourite image of my father's. I'm very fond of certain periods of work, such as the Democratic Forest, primarily because I was a teenager when he shot those images and I remember him making them. I also find those photos not as obviously accessible as some of his more classic images, which offer a depth of exploration I enjoy'.
He also recalled accompanying his father as a teenager: 'I have very fond memories of accompanying my father when I was around 16, the summer he photographed Graceland. It was the early days of the operations and everything was very casual. They let us in after they closed, so I have these memories of being there after hours and having free rein of the place, which was very unusual'.
Legacy and a slower way of looking
Eggleston's standing as one of the masters of colour photography is widely acknowledged, but the gradual steps by which he transformed into a leading artist are less well known. The Chromes series – Kodachromes and Ektachromes representing his early Memphis imagery – shows his testing of colour and compositional strategies, and the development towards the 'poetic snapshot'.
Eggleston famously once said: 'You can take a good picture of anything. A bad one, too'. Seen today, 50 years after their original publication, in a time when images are constantly produced and circulated, his photographs offer a slower, more attentive way of looking – a way of making the ordinary extraordinary. All images by William Eggleston are courtesy of the Eggleston Artistic Trust, Tate and David Zwirner.
