Point and Shoot

Hailed as the father of color photography, William Eggleston’s casually brilliant photographs—taken on the fly, but full of vivid color and quiet suggestion—were the first to cement the medium’s status as an art form. Now 70, the Tennessee-born photographer is as prolific as ever, though somewhat less of a hellraiser than in his younger days, which are infamously captured in his debauched, sprawling home-movie style film Stranded in Canton (which received a long-delayed release in 2008). Snapping unplanned compositions of the everyday, from diners and motels to car parks and bathrooms, Eggleston finds beauty in the most mundane places. Fresh from a tour of his current career retrospective, he will exhibit a selection of new work at Victoria Miro, London this month.