Today at the Museum

William Eggleston: Los Alamos
February 6–May 15, 2005

Eggleston’s inventive use of color and spontaneous compositions profoundly influenced the generation of photographers that followed him, as well as critics, curators, and writers concerned with photographs. Although he didn’t invent the process, Eggleston is known as the “Father of Color Photography.” He used a dye-transfer process that was radically new at the time that allowed Eggleston to print photographs of intense color and to control his palette in a manner similar to a painter controlling oil paint.

“The work is an incredible use of color at a time when color photographs were not considered high art,” Wylie said. “His influence has been incalculable on artists’ thinking about photography as a tool to use in their work. There is also a time-capsule effect of the work, a slice of the American southwest of the 60s and 70s that existed once and of course will not return—the work is not nostalgia; it’s evidence of the past beautifully preserved.”

Initially, Eggleston planned to create a compendium of more than 2,000 photographs to be contained in 20 volumes; his aim was to make the viewer look at photographs the way one looks at the world. But he abandoned the project, and hardly any of the negatives were ever printed. Now, 30 years later, a selection of this idiosyncratic encyclopedia of southern everyday life and vernacular culture is available to be seen.

William Eggleston: The Los Alamos Project was organized by the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, was previously on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the only other venue in the United States. The Dallas presentation was curated by Charles Wylie. The Dallas Museum of Art will serve as the final venue of the international tour. The exhibition is complemented by a catalogue with 97 full-color images. The hardcover catalogue is available in the Museum Store for $65.

Exhibition support is provided by the Contemporary Art Fund through the gifts of an anonymous donor, Naomi Aberly and Laurence Lebowitz, Arlene and John Dayton, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Faulconer, Nancy and Tim Hanley, The Hoffman Family Foundation, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Evelyn P. and Edward W. Rose, and Gayle and Paul Stoffel. Additional support provided by the Exhibitionists Endowment Fund.

 

The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

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