William Eggleston, Untitled (from Los Alamos, 1965-68 and 1972-74)

I will never forget the first time I saw a photograph by William Eggleston. It was the Los Alamos exhibition at the SFMoMA; I was sixteen, a time when the only thing I could do to mask the uncertainty I felt about the world was with an all too common teenage bravado. But as I walked through the rooms, every ounce of the know-it-all in me fell away; I had never seen the world look the way it did in those photographs. The curiosity, devotion, and nonchalance all shone through the unworldly vibrancy of each dye-transfer print. It feels trite to say that he taught me how to see, but it also seems like an understatement. Now as a somewhat less uncertain adult, I was able to relive with the same sense of awe I felt as a teenager while viewing William Eggleston: New Dyes, the current exhibition at RoseGallery in Los Angeles.

Untitled, 1970-1973; from William Eggleston, Chromes; published by Steidl in 2011. Images courtesy of the Eggleston Artistic Trust and ROSEGALLERY

Selected from the same group of Kodachrome slides from which John Szarkowski curated Eggleston’s first show at The Museum of Modern Art in 1976, the images were printed by Guy Stricherz and Irene Mali, two of the last practitioners of the dye-transfer process, and it makes all the difference. There is a time and place for just about any medium to be used, but art really stands the test of time when the artist uses the most appropriate materials for each specific project. Eggleston, master of color and composition, rightfully began printing his 35mm slides with the dye-transfer process, which requires using three printing layers, (one for each subtractive color), to produce an unparalleled spectrally pure image.

Untitled, 1970-1973; from William Eggleston, Chromes; published by Steidl in 2011. Images courtesy of the Eggleston Artistic Trust and ROSEGALLERY

The resulting photographs glow with saturation, then are unexpectedly combined with subjected matter so seemingly mundane. That is Eggleston’s gift. He takes everyday minutia and elevates it to such levels of grandeur one could hardly imagine the images were taken in our backyards, on our streets and in our living rooms; he reminds us that the world surrounding us is full of wonder.

Untitled, 1970-1973; from William Eggleston, Chromes; published by Steidl in 2011. Images courtesy of the Eggleston Artistic Trust and ROSEGALLERY

In the introduction to Eggleston’s The Democratic Forest, Eudora Welty wrote that “he sets forth what makes up our ordinary world. What is there, however strange, can be accepted without question; familiarity will be what overwhelms us.” It is that unrelenting familiarity that draws you into the image and makes you want to look as deeply as Eggleston looks at the world. And, as if to reward the viewer for their hard work, he subtly hides small secrets in the edges and backgrounds; on signs and buildings and in the relationships between objects.

Untitled, 1970-1973; from William Eggleston, Chromes; published by Steidl in 2011. Images courtesy of the Eggleston Artistic Trust and ROSEGALLERY

Before visiting the gallery, I wondered why these images were not chosen for the original show in the 1970s; are they the rejects? The answer to that is a resounding no. Each image holds its own unique view into the world just as the images we are familiar with. The images have the quiet contemplation of a person walking around with a camera and documenting the tiny dramas and narratives fill the frames and our lives. They are reminders that amidst every other chaotic thing, there is beauty.

Peter Van Agtmael, "2008, Above Afghanistan" on the cover of "2nd Tour, Hope I Don't Die." Via Magnum Photos.

Clicking through TIME Magazine’s “Most Unforgettable Images” of 2010 feels a bit like watching a missionary slideshow at an Evangelical tent meeting. There are helpless bodies,  flames, sweeping gestures and unsettling blue skies, all tied together in concentric compositions. What’s more, each image seems certain its viewers will  intuitively understand why and how it matters; they will first feel bowled over by stark reality, then invigorated by that implicit hope for redemption that any good missionary hopes to pass on. The fact that these 48 images have made TIME’s cut means they’ve evangelized effectively.

A weird religious fervor has characterized photojournalism almost since its beginning, certainly since the Second World War. The “god’s-eye-view” (a term used by scholar Erika Doss, among others) so many photographs take suggests sweeping access to the world’s events and terrains—it’s like writing in the third person omniscient.

One omniscient image in TIME’s “Best of” list is by Peter Van Agtmael, a Yale graduate who worked as a photojournalist in China and Johannesburg before embedding in Iraq and later Afghanistan (“I knew these specific wars were intertwined with me, or at least I wanted them to be,” he told the New York Times in 2009). The images he’s made are quietly searing and rarely of action as it takes place; more often, they described moments before, after or in-between. The photograph featured in TIME depicts long rows of cement barriers flanking a street at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. It feels cool and utilitarian, but its dogged repetition lends to a sort of romantically melancholic, admirably well-composed vastness.

Another image by Van Agtmael, one I find even more compelling, has similar vastness. Called 2008, Above Afghanistan, it features on the cover of the book 2^nd tour, Hope I don’t die, and depicts a magnificent spread of desert terrain over which one lone white cloud casts a soft shadow. Even though it’s relatively small, the cloud recalls something atomic—like the billowing mushrooms of smoke that, post-Hiroshima, have come to stand-in for everything nuclear. The image also has a washed-out, blue-over-orange coloring that recalls the nostalgic aesthetic of William Eggleston.

William Eggleston, from Los Alamos, 1966-1974. Courtesy the Eggleston Trust.

I can’t look at Van Agtmael’s Above Afghanistan without thinking of Eggleston’s Los Alamos series, much of which is on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through January 16^th. Completed in 1974, Los Alamos features a whole host of clouds and was loosely informed by the photographer’s visit to the atomic bomb’s birthplace (very loosely informed, actually, as Eggleston had almost finished the series when he first laid eyes on Los Alamos). Then-Corcoran curator Walter Hopps explained, “This title cloaks with some irony Eggleston’s ostensible subjects, found in a vast American terrain, yet acknowledges his belief in the aesthetic consequences of his private quest.”

Each time I visit the Eggleston retrospective, I leave in awe of one particular image from the series: a photograph of a cocktail on a plane. My awe makes me slightly self-conscious, as the image’s shimmery reflections have a sexiness reminiscent of a vintage cigarette ad. Or maybe, more aptly, they have both the brazen glamor of a James Bond flick and a veranda-worthy Southern gentility. Such lushness can’t exist anymore; it’s specific to a time when airplanes had leg room and air travel felt like freedom. Yet, despite the scene’s datedness, I can imagine the person stirring that cocktail leaning over and looking down onto a desert landscape like the one Van Agtmael portrays.

William Eggleston, from "Los Alamos," 1966-1974. Courtesy the Eggleston Trust and LACMA.

Van Agtmael’s images, like those of many photojournalists, adapt large public issues and render them for stirring private effect. While this public-made-private approach does not leave much room for moments like those Eggleston depicts, Eggleston’s images are gripping precisely because they leave room for a bigger world beyond their borders. They just doesn’t presume to take a god’s eye view of it.