Making of ‘Untitled’ (by William Eggleston, 1973), 2016

The story behind the photograph…

William Eggleston’s (b. 1939) celebrated image is untitled, but has become known by two names: The Red Ceiling’ and, after its location and year, ‘Greenwood, Mississippi, 1973’. Eggleston is credited with bringing colour photography – which was previously seen as ‘commercial’, and the preserve of advertising and fashion photography – into the sphere of the art world and museums. Today, prints of ‘The Red Ceiling’ can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The photograph was originally reproduced as a dye transfer print, a process Eggleston discovered in 1973 while looking through a photography lab price list. Dye transfer printing was the most expensive option of the time – ‘the ultimate’, in the photographer’s view. ‘When you look at the dye it is like red blood that’s wet on the wall.... A little red is usually enough, but to work with an entire red surface was a challenge.’ Eggleston has never been wholly satisfied with any reproduction of the photograph in a book or by any means other than dye transfer.