The Last Dyes

David Zwirner is pleased to announce The Last Dyes, an exhibition of new dye-transfer prints by William Eggleston opening at the gallery's 533 West 19th Street location in New York. Eggleston pioneered the use of dye-transfer printing for art photography in the 1970s, and—as the title suggests—these photographs are the final prints ever made of Eggleston's images using this analog process. The presentation itself constitutes the last major group of photographs ever to be produced using this printing method, making it a unique opportunity to see a number of works by Eggleston in the format in which he originally presented them. Eggleston's discovery of the dye-transfer process in the 1970s—primarily used in advertising at the time—was crucial to his move from primarily working in black-and-white to producing color photographs. In the early 1990s, Kodak stopped producing the dyes, paper, and the Matrix film used in the process. With the necessary materials now discontinued, and the bulk of what remained being used for this exhibition, The Last Dyes marks the final presentation of new works completed in this medium.