Artist Analysis #5

William Eggleston

Early in his career Eggleston shot only in black and white, because that's about all that was available at the time. Later on, however, he began experimenting with color processes, such as dye-transfer printing, a cheap process used mainly for commercial and fashion prints. This process was used for many of his most famous works. Eggleston's works marked a sort of turning point in the history of photography, he was one of the first to start making colored prints and the first to start taking photos of everyday life rather than monumental landscape shots, like that of Adams and Weston.

This photo is one of 88 prints from his body of work titled Los Alamos, from sites he saw while traveling through New Mexico from 1965 to 1974. This image shows two people sitting at a booth, enjoying a smoke, at a non nondescript cafe or restaurant. The camera is at head height and positioned directly behind one of the subjects acting to obscure the other person across the table. This is obviously a period piece based on the hair style, clothes and the fact that its illegal now days to smoke in a restaurant. The colors are extremely vivid and are complementary calming and easy to look at.  There is vignetting happening on the corners, which could be an effect he added or naturally occurring from the dye-transfer process. The only thing truly in focus is the back of the woman's head, which means he was probably using a fairly large aperture setting. His choice not to show any faces and only a small zoomed in portion of the space gives it a sense of anonymity, and I think would make it feel timeless if it wasn't for the other clues of the time period.