William Eggleston has called this the first color photograph he made, although it is likely more accurate to say that this is the first color photograph that met his high standards for composition, color, and clarity. Made in 1965, it comes from the series of work now known as Los Alamos which documents the trips he took with camera in hand from 1965 to 1974 (see lot 12).  This body of work is remarkable for showing how fully developed Eggleston’s eye was – how attuned to color and craft – from the earliest days of his career. The print offered here epitomizes this body of work perfectly. Attentive viewing reveals that the shadow of the main subject cast upon the wall of the supermarket is joined by the photographer’s own shadow.

Eggleston spoke of the trial and error that led up to this photograph and pointed him toward a wholly new type of color photography:

‘My first tries were ridiculous. I got some snapshots back, and I hadn’t exposed them properly, they were awful … I’d assumed that I could do in color what I could do in black and white, and I got a swift, harsh lesson. All bones bared. But it had to be.  Then one night I stayed up figuring out what I was gonna do the next day, which was go to the big supermarket down the street, then called Montesi’s – why I don’t know. It seemed a good place to try things out. I had this new exposure system in mind, of overexposing the film so all the colors would be there. And by God, it all worked. Just overnight. The first frame, I remember, was a guy pushing grocery carts … those pictures revealed the beauty of light. That it was capturable.’

Memphis (supermarket boy with carts) comes from a select group of large-format dye transfer prints William Eggleston made in 2015 that has become known as The Magnificent Seven. This group consists of seven of his best known and most iconic photographs – photographs which have come to be associated with his artistic achievement over seven decades. To realize this project, Eggleston worked closely with master printers Guy Stricherz and Irene Malli who had sourced a stock of dye transfer materials, which had long before been discontinued by Kodak. Eggleston completed the set of seven dye transfer prints, each a photographic masterpiece, in an edition of ten. Each is the largest dye transfer print of the image ever executed. This is the first time photographs from The Magnificent Seven have appeared at auction.   

The Magnificent Seven present a concise overview of Eggleston’s career. The appellation draws comparisons to cinema and the financial markets. Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film masterpiece The Seven Samurai was initially released in the United States under the title The Magnificent Seven. In 1960, Kurosawa’s screenplay was adapted into a Western, the blockbuster film The Magnificent Seven. Much later, financial analyst Michael Hartnett used the term Magnificent Seven to describe the stock of the seven dominant companies in the stock market.

Whether the comparison is to cinema or the financial markets, the term Magnificent Seven refers to a selection of seven archetypal entities chosen from many for their excellence. In all instances the seven are the best of the group, each a perfect example of its type, that also represent the whole. It is a perfect name for this carefully selected suite of masterworks by William Eggleston. 

The photographs in this sale are master prints from Guy Stricherz and Irene Malli of Color Vision Imaging Laboratory. They are the perfected dye transfer prints by which subsequent prints in the edition were judged. Acknowledged masters of the exacting dye transfer process, Mr. Stricherz and Ms. Malli achieved a level of skill in their craft that has not been surpassed. Working in partnership with William Eggleston and other eminent photographers, they have played a crucial role in raising the standard for color photography. Founded in New York City in 1981, CVI Lab became a destination for photographers looking for the finest color prints possible. Mr. Stricherz and Ms. Malli have steadily pushed the dye transfer technique forward, fine tuning the process’s many variables into a highly expressive, visually arresting, and archivally stable medium. For more information on Guy Stricherz, Irene Malli, and CVI Lab, click here.