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WILLIAM EGGLESTON (American, b. 1939) 14 PICTURES signed and editioned on verso of each print fo...

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WILLIAM EGGLESTON (American, b. 1939) 14 PICTURES signed and editioned on verso of each print fo...
WILLIAM EGGLESTON (American, b. 1939) 14 PICTURES signed and editioned on verso of each print fourteen vintage dye-transfer prints each: 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm) 1971-1974 each print in the portfolio is number 14 from an edition of 15 PROVENANCE From an Important European Collection LITERATURE John Szarkowski, MIRRORS AND WINDOWS: AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY SINCE 1960, New York, 1978, p. 132 (no. 12 illustrated) William Eggleston, ANCIENT AND MODERN, LONDON, 1992, (no. 1 is p. 35, no. 5 is p. 65, no. 10 is p. 41; illustrated) HASSELBLAD AWARD 1998: WILLIAM EGGLESTON, Gothenburg, 1999, n.p. (nos. 1, 10, 12 are illustrated; nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 are illustrated as thumbnails) Peter Galassi, WALKER EVANS & COMPANY, New York, 2000 (no. 1 is pl. 182 on p. 158; no. 6 is pl. 104 on p. 105) Hervé Chandès, WILLIAM EGGLESTON, Paris, 2001, pls. 66-73 (nos. 9, 3, 1, 6, 5, 10, 12, 13 are illustrated in that order) In 1974, while teaching photography at Harvard University, William Eggleston privately published this limited-edition portfolio of 14 PICTURES. Although it was the first such venture of his career, Eggleston still regards this suite as one of the best groupings of his work. Indeed, these fourteen photographs are unified by a notable absence of human protagonists, and a striking use of raking angles. Both of these qualities lend an unsettling air to these otherwise ordinary scenes of suburban Memphis. The most distinguishing feature of the present work is its use of dye-transfer printing. In addition to THE RED CEILING (1973), which quickly entered the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the prints in 14 PICTURES were among the first that Eggleston created with this process. The artist discovered this new method of printing color negatives in 1973. "I was reading the price list of this lab in Chicago," Eggleston has recalled, "and it advertised 'from the cheapest to the ultimate print.' The ultimate print was a dye-transfer. I went straight up there to look and everything I saw was commercial work like pictures of cigarette packs or perfume bottles but the color saturation and the quality of the ink was overwhelming. I couldn't wait to see what a plain Eggleston picture would look like with the same process. Every photograph I subsequently printed with the process seemed fantastic and each one seemed better than the previous one" (Quoted in Mark Holborn, WILLIAM EGGLESTON: ANCIENT AND MODERN, London: Jonathan Cape, 1992, p. 16). Here we witness the dramatic results of Eggleston's first experiments with this process. Nearly all the prints feature the vivid reds and yellows that the artist favored in the early 1970s. But Eggleston uses them rather sparingly in this portfolio, capturing glimpses of bright color amidst more muted tints. When printed as dye-transfers, however, these isolated shards of red and gold gain a remarkable chromatic intensity. This example is believed to be the last complete portfolio to exist in private hands.
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