This photograph is one of a trio of nearly monochromatic images of ceilings that served as aesthetic and technical exercises for William Eggleston (see lots 14 and 15). Devoting the majority of the picture frame to one color presented a challenge: while his images generally depend upon the nuanced interplay of an array of colors, a single predominant color required a singular focus on that color’s compositional significance. Eggleston, a lifelong musician, likened this sort of exercise to playing a piece by Bach, requiring both clinical precision and a heightened sense of aesthetics. The image also posed a challenge for the dye transfer printers, who had to create a perfectly balanced single color using cyan, magenta, and yellow separations.

Eggleston took this photograph at the Washington, DC, home of his friend, the artist William Christenberry. Eggleston met Christenberry, a fellow Southerner, in the 1960s, when Christenberry was teaching at Memphis State University, and the two found they had much in common including an interest in color photography. It was Christenberry who in 1970 introduced Eggleston to Walter Hopps, a figure who would play a central role in Eggleston’s career. In 1966, it was Christenberry who arranged for the reproduction of a suite of Eggleston’s black-and-white photographs in the Memphis State University journal, Phoenix. This is believed to be the first time Eggleston’s work appeared in print. 

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.