William Eggleston's Colour Gets a Big Soho Show, Fifty Years After His Guide

'William Eggleston: All That Goes Unnoticed' opened at The Photographers' Gallery, 16–18 Ramillies Street, on Wednesday 14 October and runs to 21 February 2027. It marks fifty years since William Eggleston's Guide, 1976, ArtRabbit notes, and shows rarely seen vintage dye-transfer prints alongside lesser-known black-and-white and Brownie images from the early 1960s and the 1970s, organised with the Wilson Centre for Photography.

Henry Roberts reviews it for Time Out: four stars, 'Recommended'. He begins at the 1976 Museum of Modern Art show, which the New York Times called 'the most hated show of the year', because Eggleston shot in colour at a time when colour belonged to magazine spreads. The picture he returns to is his most famous, a light bulb hanging from a red ceiling, with a poster in the bottom right of the frame that takes a moment to notice. Another shows an elegantly dressed woman in suburban Memphis staring into the lens beside a bundle of chains and a padlock.

Time Out's shorthand for the pictures: 'saturated ordinariness'.

Visiting

Tickets are £12, and free every Friday after 5pm, Time Out says; ArtRabbit lists £12 in person and £10 online. Opening hours, per ArtRabbit, are Monday to Wednesday 10:30–18:00, Thursday and Friday 10:30–20:00, Saturday 10:30–18:00 and Sunday 11:00–18:00. Two companion shows opened the same day and run to 21 February 2027: Sanlé Sory: Colour Years, and Snap Happy! How Children Became Photographers.

Colour as the subject, not the decoration, is still the argument every graded campaign makes. If you work in colour for a living, our guide to studio lighting fundamentals is the practical end of it, and the rest of this month's photography is gathered in London's October openings.