He couldn't be happier': celebrating William Eggleston's incredible photography

"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's most iconic picture of a red ceiling. It's all normal to you, because you don't know anything different, Winston recently recalled. Looking back, I was lucky."

"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 at a time when the art world regarded color as vulgar Eggleston began using dye-transfer, in the 1970s, to give his photos a startling Technicolor pop. 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's thousands of photos might enjoy a final blaze of color-saturated glory. In the end only about 50 photos could make the cut. Thirty-one of them are included in William Eggleston: The Last Dyes, an exhibition 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."

William Eggleston pioneered dye-transfer printing to achieve exceptionally vibrant, Technicolor-like color photographs at a time when the art world considered color vulgar. Winston Eggleston recalls childhood impressions of yellow Kodak film boxes and sour-smelling paper used for these prints. After Kodak discontinued dye-transfer products in the 1990s, the Eggleston family acquired remaining stocks and undertook a careful selection of images for final dye-transfer prints. Roughly 50 photographs were chosen for that process, and 31 are included in William Eggleston: The Last Dyes at the David Zwirner Gallery. The exhibition may represent the final presentation of dye-transfer photographs.

Read at www.theguardian.com