William Eggleston · Los Alamos.

A narrow shop off a canal in Ghent, the kind of shop whose owner does not look up when the door opens. The book was on a low shelf, in the section that had no sign. I did not know I was looking for it. I have never been able to explain why I bought it that afternoon and not any of the twenty afternoons before.

On the way most photobooks arrive with a great deal to say and, two or three re-readings later, run out. Eggleston’s do the opposite. They arrive quietly and slowly disclose more each year. On the way this book has outlasted three moves↝, two apartments, and considerable rearranging of the reading table.

A single spread — a suburban interior with a shaft of afternoon light↝ across the floor and, in the doorway, the suggestion of someone about to leave the frame. Nothing else happens in it. We come back to it four or five times a year. It has never stopped saying something new.

Before this book, I was still, faintly, embarrassed to photograph the ordinary. Eggleston is the reason I am not anymore. Colour is permitted. The plainly domestic is permitted. The half-empty glass on the table is a subject. It turns out this had been true all along; I had only been waiting for someone to say so, in a book of pictures rather than a paragraph of theory.