William Eggleston: The Last Dyes

This momentous publication catalogues the last major group of William Eggleston’s photographs to ever be produced using the dye transfer method, the format in which he originally presented them.

＂Like finding a Beatles album that no one knew existed. Everything about it is mind-bogglingly good.＂ --The Guardian

Eggleston’s vivid photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning. One of the foremost practitioners in the medium’s history, Eggleston is widely considered the father of color photography. He pioneered the use of dye-transfer printing for art photography in the 1970s. The technically advanced process--first developed by Kodak in the 1940s--allowed him to achieve the richness of tonal depth and color saturation that he had been searching for. In the early 1990s, Kodak stopped producing the dyes, paper, and film used in the process. With the necessary materials now discontinued, and the bulk of what remained being used for this exhibition, The Last Dyes marks the final presentation of new works completed in this medium.

With a foreword by William Eggleston III and Winston Eggleston, and an essay by Jeffrey Kastner, this publication will offer critical insights into Eggleston’s enduring influence at this turning point in the history of photography.

Over the course of nearly six decades, William Eggleston has established a singular pictorial style that deftly combines vernacular subject matter with an innate and sophisticated understanding of color, form, and composition. His photographs transform the ordinary into distinctive, poetic images that eschew fixed meaning. His 1976 solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by John Szarkowski, marked one of the first presentations of color photography at the museum. Although initially criticized for its unfamiliar approach, the show and its accompanying catalogue, William Eggleston’s Guide, heralded an important moment in the medium’s acceptance within the art-historical canon, and it solidified the artist’s position as one of its foremost practitioners to date. Eggleston’s work continues to exert an influence on contemporary visual culture at large.