Surfacing on the market: Pioneer of colour photography

A highlight of this collection of 20th-century photography is an original print by the American photographer William Eggleston. Like many of his images, Memphis (1969-70, printed in the 1970s) captures a mundane subject—a tricycle in residential suburbia—but is distinguished by its use of colour, Eggleston’s most radical contribution to fine art photography in the 1960s and early 1970s. This print (est $250,000-$350,000) was made using the complex and expensive dye transfer process, which requires chemicals that Kodak stopped manufacturing in the 1990s. The image featured on the cover of the monograph that accompanied Eggleston’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1976. The show, organised by the late John Szarkowski, a champion of American post-war photography, faced a critical backlash, but Szarkowski wrote that Eggleston’s pictures were “perfect”.