Beauty and the banal

In 1965 William Eggleston took the first colour photograph that, he felt, really succeeded. The location was outside a supermarket in Memphis, Tennessee; the time — to judge from the rich golden light and long shadows — late afternoon. Eggleston’s subject — a young man with a heavily slicked, early Elvis hairstyle stacking trolleys outside the shop — was as ordinary as he could be. But the result was a photographic masterpiece.

It is included in the exhibition William Eggleston: Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, although, by most definitions, it is not a portrait. Indeed, it is as hard to say just what it is as it is to explain exactly why it is so good.

Actually, great pictures are often images of very commonplace sights. The ‘Mona Lisa’ is just a woman smiling in front of a view — the theme of a trillion selfies; Van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ simply depicts two people standing in a room.