David Zwirner presents The Last Dyes, an exhibition of new dye transfer prints by William Eggleston opening at the gallery’s 606 N Western Avenue space in Los Angeles.
The works presented are from Eggleston’s celebrated Outlands and Chromes series, as well as several images that were first shown in the artist’s groundbreaking exhibition of colour photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1976, and in the concomitant publication William Eggleston’s Guide.
Eggleston, in consultation with his sons William and Winston, chose this group of images for his final tinctures as a representative selection from the photographic project he undertook between 1969 and 1974 during his travels through the American South and West. In 1972, Eggleston discovered the dye transfer process, which enabled him to achieve the richness of tone and saturation of colour that he was looking for.
Developed by Kodak in the 1940s, the dye transfer process and materials were mainly used for fashion photography and commercial purposes. More akin to offset printing, the dye transfer process is a technically advanced, hand-made endeavour in which the original image (Eggleston used mainly Kodachrome slides) is divided into three separation negatives which are then enlarged onto three film matrices – a transparent cell coated with a light-sensitive emulsion – as positive images. Each of the three film matrices is immersed in a bath of cyan, magenta and yellow dye, respectively, with the gelatin in the matrices retaining the dye. One by one, the individual matrices are pressed and rolled onto a special fibre paper that is highly receptive to the dyes, resulting in the final colour photograph.
In the early 1990s, Kodak stopped producing the dyes, paper and Matrix film used in the process. At that time, Eggleston and renowned dye transfer specialists Guy Stricherz and Irene Malli – who had been printing Eggleston’s work for the past twenty-five years – began to acquire the dye transfer materials still available, using the last significant quantities to produce these final photographs.
The images selected for The Last Dyes bear witness to this special association between artist and medium, and serve as a showcase for Eggleston’s ability to visually grasp, then isolate and capture the unique qualities of colour and light. In many of his landscapes and exteriors, Eggleston manifests the vastness of the Southern sky within the confines of the rectangular field of the image, bringing together lush green expanses and dilapidated built structures beneath streaked cirrus and cumulus clouds. Road signs and cars stand out like blocks of colour against the tonal gradations of skies shot at different times of day. People, too, become vehicles for colour visual components in the compositions – and also serve as emblems of the time and place in which Eggleston encountered them.
The Last Dyes also includes interiors in which the contrast between highlights and darker shadows presents a baroque tenebrism – palpable blacks with brighter-lit figures or objects located within. One of these works, a self-portrait, shows Eggleston reclining in a darkened room, his head resting on a bright white pillow whose folds resemble soft carved marble. The artist’s fixed face and oversized hand, resting close to the camera lens, have a similar sculptural appearance. The scene evokes the sacred light of the interior of a Baroque church and exudes a sense of calm and familiarity befitting the environment – perhaps a motel – in which Eggleston took the photograph.
Balancing formal, chromatic and compositional sophistication with poignant portraits of these real worlds and the people who inhabit them, these dye transfer prints seem as vibrant and alive today as the scenes themselves were when Eggleston photographed them some fifty years ago.
William Eggleston : The Last Dyes is presented as part of PST ART: Art&ScienceCollide, a major regional event exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty.
William Eggleston : The Last Dyes
Until February 1, 2025
David Zwirner Los Angeles
606 N Western Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90004
www.davidzwirner.com
