{"id":483036,"date":"2026-02-18T13:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483036\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T13:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:01:07","slug":"he-couldnt-be-happier-celebrating-william-egglestons-incredible-photography-william-eggleston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483036\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He couldn\u2019t be happier\u2019: celebrating William Eggleston\u2019s incredible photography | William Eggleston"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a small child, Winston Eggleston was only vaguely aware that his father, William Eggleston<\/a>, was a famous photographer. For all he knew other children also had parents who were friends with Dennis Hopper, or who spent hours tinkering on a piano between occasional, fevered photography sprees, or who had taken the world\u2019s most iconic picture of a red ceiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all normal to you, because you don\u2019t know anything different,\u201d Winston recently recalled. \u201cLooking back, I was lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he was intrigued by the yellow boxes of Kodak film he saw lying around his house, and by an odd, sour-smelling paper on which his father occasionally printed photographs. These were materials for dye-transfer, a special technique used to print fashion and advertising photos of exceptionally vibrant color. As one of the first art photographers to embrace color photography \u2013 at a time when the art world regarded color as vulgar \u2013 Eggleston began using dye-transfer, in the 1970s, to give his photos a startling Technicolor pop.<\/p>\n

When Kodak discontinued its dye-transfer products in the 1990s, the Egglestons began buying up any stocks they could find. They also began a difficult project: deciding which of William Eggleston\u2019s thousands of photos might enjoy a final blaze of color-saturated glory. In the end only about 50 photos could make the cut.<\/p>\n

Thirty-one of them are included in William Eggleston: The Last Dyes, an exhibition<\/a> through 7 March at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York. The show may be the last ever exhibition of photographs, by Eggleston or anyone else, produced using dye-transfer. When I visited the Chelsea gallery on a ferociously cold and windy recent Saturday, more than a dozen people, some with children, had endured subzero temperatures to see them.<\/p>\n

William Eggleston \u2013 Untitled, 1970. Photograph: William Eggleston\/Courtesy Eggleston Artistic Trust and David Zwirner<\/p>\n

Even after having had dye-transfer explained to me several times, I\u2019m not sure I totally understand the technical aspects of the process<\/a>. But the results speak for themselves: the brick reds, indigo blues, canary yellows, sunset pinks and verdant greens of Eggleston\u2019s work dazzle against the white walls of the gallery. One photograph beckons<\/a> the viewer down a dark, greenish hallway toward a bathroom glowing an infernal red, as if the toilet, seen from a long low angle, were the throne of Satan himself. (Unsurprisingly, Eggleston and David Lynch were fans of each other\u2019s work.)<\/p>\n

The texture of Eggleston\u2019s photos is also expressed to vivid effect \u2013 dead leaves, the pebbled metal of a car interior, the sandpapery concrete around a desolate swimming pool.<\/p>\n

The photos are a mixture of Eggleston\u2019s \u201cbig hitters\u201d and \u201cstuff that had never been printed before\u201d, Winston, 53, told me. He was speaking by video-call from his home in Memphis, at a property where his father also now lives; behind him was a framed print of one of Eggleston\u2019s works. Winston wore a marled grey sweater, blue striped shirt and black baseball cap \u2013 a more casual iteration, perhaps, of his father\u2019s southern-fried Savile Row aesthetic of dark suits and bowties worn undone<\/a> like string ties.<\/p>\n

For years Winston and his brother, William III, have been working with their father, now 86, to archive and preserve his work. The dye transfers were done by Guy Stricherz and Irene Malli, a married couple who are among the last remaining<\/a> specialists of the expensive and laborious process. Each batch of 10 photos took six to eight months, sometimes longer, to print.<\/p>\n

Like the dye-transfer prints, the photos of The Last Dyes, taken between 1969 and 1974, feel like documents from a world that was perhaps already vanishing \u2013 an American south of derelict drive-in theaters, rusted metal advertising and Oldsmobiles.<\/p>\n

Yet when Eggleston debuted his work, at a notorious 1976 exhibition at Moma, it was novel to the point of polarizing. Color photography had existed for decades, but most serious art photographers worked in black-and-white, and they did not generally take photos of toilets or glasses of iced tea. In a book<\/a> for the new show, the writer Jeffrey Kastner argues that the legend that the Moma show was universally panned has been overstated; it is true, though, that many critics were unimpressed with Eggleston\u2019s snapshot-style photos of the everyday, which struck them as about as interesting as a random person\u2019s vacation Polaroids.<\/p>\n

William Eggleston \u2013 Untitled, 1972. Photograph: Courtesy Eggleston Artistic Trust and David Zwirner<\/p>\n

Time has been kinder to Eggleston\u2019s ability to see beauty in the ugly, tacky or mundane \u2013 to wage \u201cwar with the obvious\u201d, as he has put it. He is now regarded as one of the most important living American photographers, and retrospectives of his work have drawn eager audiences in recent years in Berlin and Barcelona. Christie\u2019s auctioned a lot of 36 of his photographs for almost $6m in 2012. (Although he listens mostly to classical music, his photos have also graced<\/a> the covers of several rock albums.)<\/p>\n

Eggleston\u2019s photos tend to feel decontextualized. They do not have titles or captions, and he is hostile to interpretation. \u201cWords and pictures [are] like two different animals,\u201d he told the New York Times in 2016. \u201cThey don\u2019t particularly like each other.\u201d And while he has sometimes been willing to recall the origins of specific photos, he works quickly and takes only a single picture of each subject, so he can\u2019t always remember their exact provenance.<\/p>\n

Most of the 1970s photographs were taken in Memphis or during road trips around Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. \u201cDad was not one of those artists who got up every day and went out working,\u201d Winston said, wryly. \u201cHe worked very sporadically, in short bursts.\u201d Winston was too young to have been present when Eggleston took most of the photos, though he can trace some of them.<\/p>\n

As he spoke, he flipped through the new book, pausing at some of Eggleston\u2019s most iconic pictures. A young woman in pink, gazing<\/a> over her shoulder from a church pew? Taken at the funeral of the blues musician Fred McDowell. A man sitting next to a maternal-looking quilt, brandishing<\/a> a revolver? He was a distant relative \u2013 or perhaps a family friend; Winston can\u2019t quite remember \u2013 who worked as the nightwatchman of a tiny Mississippi town.<\/p>\n

William Eggleston in 2019. Photograph: Tristan Fewings\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The exhibition also includes a photo of a blue ceiling<\/a> that echoes Eggleston\u2019s better-known red one<\/a>. It was taken at the same house \u2013 of a friend of Eggleston\u2019s who was later believed to be murdered<\/a> \u2013 and is equally striking. Although contemporaneous, it now feels like a smiling nod to the other photo.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many years, it was, \u2018Should we print it?\u2019 \u2018Eh, it\u2019s too derivative of the red ceiling,\u2019\u201d Winston said. \u201cAnd finally, we\u2019re like, well, of course we should print it! I mean, this is it \u2013 and I\u2019m really glad we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decades of bourbon and cigarettes, plus experimentation with substances in his younger years, have somehow not limited his father\u2019s longevity. But he has been forced to slow down, Winston said. He is not as mobile these days, which makes photography difficult, and has lived quietly since his long-suffering but beloved<\/a> wife of a half century, Rosa, died in 2015. Their daughter Andra, a fashion designer, has a textile line<\/a> inspired by his art.<\/p>\n

The final photo in the new book is a proto-selfie that Eggleston took sometime in the 1970s: his head lies horizontally on a pillow, facing the viewer, eyes closed in calm repose. Eggleston is now, no doubt, thinking about his legacy. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t be happier about the new show,\u201d Winston said. \u201cHe loves the new catalogue. It\u2019s funny, though \u2013 I don\u2019t think that he\u2019s totally accepted the fact that the dye-transfer is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winston has elsewhere described<\/a> his father\u2019s work as \u201cdemocratic and neutral\u201d \u2013 a description that echoes a title that Eggleston once gave his work, The Democratic Forest, and one that Eggleston\u2019s attitude toward his work would seem to reflect. According to Winston, his father does not prefer any of his photos over any others. He likes them all equally, and leaves the editing of his collections to other people.<\/p>\n

Winston once asked his father which of his photos, if forced to choose, he considered his favorite or his best. \u201cHis answer,\u201d he said, \u201cwas, \u2018Well, I guess I\u2019d have to go into a room and turn the lights off, throw them all up in the air, and grab one.\u201d<\/p>\n