CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/10/2023

Exquisite Eggleston in 'Mystery of the Ordinary'

Featured photograph, from William Eggleston’s 1969–74 series The Outlands, is reproduced from Mystery of the Ordinary, the beautifully produced, clothbound new release from Steidl and C/O Berlin, published to accompany the black-and-white-to-color survey currently on view at Fundación MAPFRE. Essayist Jörg Sasse cites Eggleston’s sense of visual wit. “Humor? Eggleston’s images are full of it, sometimes obviously, often subtly, and also purely visually. This is another reason why many of his images have set aside their photographic references to gain a timeless validity. And because the world is funnier than we could determining think, if you just look closely enough, one can greet the eeriness of some of Eggleston’s images with a smile.”