“As pictures, these seem to me perfect: irreducible surrogates for the experience they pretend to record, visual analogues for the quality of one life, collectively a paradigm of a private view, a view one would have thought ineffable, described here with clarity, fullness, and elegance.”

 —John Szarkowski, William Eggleston’s Guide

Memphis (green bathroom) was included in William Eggleston’s first museum exhibition, Photographs by William Eggleston, curated by John Szarkowski at The Museum of Modern Art in 1976, and is reproduced in the accompanying book, William Eggleston’s Guide, MoMA’s first publication devoted to photography in color. The exhibition and book introduced Eggleston and his work to the world, and presented a new conception of color photography unassociated with advertising or the commercial world, and consonant not only with the Lyric Documentary tradition in photography but with the saturated coloration of Pop Art. Complex, cerebral, and entirely unprecedented, the work inspired a kind of critical cognitive dissonance which took several decades to resolve. Ultimately, it inspired viewers and photographers toward a new understanding of the creative potential inherent in color photography.

This print of William Eggleston’s iconic Memphis (green bathroom) 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.