Sharp shooter
Racked up and positioned in rows that disappear along sharp diagonals, pinball machines, magazines and men are of a piece here.
One shot
The composition is striking. And yet, as with all of Eggleston’s pioneering colour photography work, it has the feel of a snapshot, a moment caught with his famed “one photo only” approach while passing through one of the typically American haunts he immortalised.
On the road
The image comes from the Los Alamos series, a product of the road trips Eggleston took between 1965 and 1974, from Memphis to Santa Monica. The location of a nuclear lab he passed lent the collection its title.
Atomised
Rediscovered and exhibited for the first time in 2003, it includes shots of silvery bouffants, brick walls and teenage limbs, candyfloss, car bumpers and strong drinks, which Eggleston delivers without titles or hierarchy, conjuring a world that’s at once of made up of beguiling surfaces and broiling with idiosyncratic life.
