# New Color photography

> Colour photographs of ordinary American things: a parked truck, an oven, a street corner, a motel room, a roadside after a flood, made when colour still meant advertising and snapshots. The colour of paint, signs, skies and plastic is the subject, caught in late or high sun or with a flash at dusk and printed straight, as dye transfers or chromogenic prints. The pictures were gathered in books.

- Period: 1970–1987
- Where it began: United States
- Kind: Documentary & reportage
- Also called: New Color, New Colour photography, 1970s American colour photography
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/new-color-photography/

## How the look is made

- Photograph ordinary, unstyled things and places, and let their colour be what the picture is about.
- Work in colour from the start; see the scene as colour, not as tones.
- Choose light that makes colour sing: late sun, high sun on paint and signs, or a flash at dusk.
- Frame plainly, level and often centred, and keep the whole scene sharp.
- Print straight, with nothing added or removed, and sequence the pictures into a book.

## How it is lit

- Late-afternoon sun low across streets, car bodies and walls, with long shadows.
- High, clear midday sun on painted signs and facades.
- An on-camera flash at dusk or indoors, mixed with the last daylight or room light.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the sun, about 45° to the camera’s left, high, hard.
- Ambient light: the open sky, from behind, to the camera’s right, soft.

## Camera settings

35–50 mm · f/8–f/90 · 1/500–1 s · ISO 25–125 (on 8x10), documented. Shore and Sternfeld on 8×10 too (Ektacolor, then Vericolor). Eggleston's handheld Leica on slide film, near f/8 and 1/125–1/500 s, is inferred.

## Directing people

Most pictures have nobody in them. When people appear they are found or barely asked: standing in a yard, sitting on a bed or lying on the grass, arms loose, looking at the camera or past it with a calm, unsmiling face, never performing, often small enough for their clothes and surroundings to carry the colour.

## Styling

Nothing is styled or moved: trucks, signs, ovens, motel rooms and yards appear as found, with worn paint, clutter and signs of use; people wear the everyday clothes they happened to have on, and the colour comes from what was already there.

## Before you shoot it

The leading photographers of this style are living artists: never prompt by their names and never recreate their specific pictures; make the subjects and places your own. Do not present a generated image as a 1970s photograph of a real place.

## Photographs

- William Eggleston, Untitled, 1974. Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Patricia and Frank Kolodny in honor of Miles Barth. In copyright. In copyright, linked: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/94303
- Stephen Shore, Second Street East & South Main Street, Kalispell, Montana, 1974. Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Stephen Shore. In copyright. In copyright, linked: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/104203
- Joel Meyerowitz, Hartwig House, Truro, Cape Cod, 1976. Art Institute of Chicago, purchased with funds provided by the Society for Contemporary Art. In copyright. In copyright, linked: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/58356
- Joel Sternfeld, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California, July 1979. Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Ralph and Nancy Segall. In copyright. In copyright, linked: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/127872

## Sources

- William Eggleston, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eggleston (Leica; colour transparency film dominant by the late 1960s; dye transfer discovered at Harvard 1973–74, The Red Ceiling 1973; the 1976 MoMA show and the Guide; Memphis and Mississippi subjects)
- Photographs by William Eggleston, installation views, Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2079 (exhibition dates 24 May – 1 August 1976, via the MoMA installation-image pages)
- Stephen Shore, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Shore (American Surfaces 1972–73, Light Gallery 1972; move to 8×10; Uncommon Places, Aperture 1982; 1976 MoMA solo show; New Topographics 1975)
- Joel Sternfeld, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Sternfeld (American Prospects begun 1978, published 1987; large-format camera; pastel hues after Albers)
- Joel Meyerowitz, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Meyerowitz (permanently adopted colour in 1972; 8×10 camera; Cape Light)
- Dye-transfer process, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye-transfer_process (gamut, control and permanence; used by Eggleston)
- Sally Eauclaire, The New Color Photography (Abbeville, 1981), Canadian Centre for Architecture library record: https://cca.qc.ca/en/search/details/library/publication/07903856 (publication details)
- The New Color, Artforum: https://www.artforum.com/events/the-new-color-227591/ (1981 review of Eauclaire's book, which puts Eggleston first and gives Meyerowitz equal space)
- William Eggleston, Memphis, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/188843 (in the Guide; colour once thought commercial; mundane subjects)
- Stephen Shore, Second Street East & South Main Street, Kalispell, Montana, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/104203 (anticommercial colour, deadpan appraisal, muted palette)
- Joel Sternfeld, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California, July 1979, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/127872 (large-format view camera; American Prospects; colour for emotional complexity)
- Guénola Pellen, Fifty Years Ago, Joel Meyerowitz Tipped Into the Light, Blind Magazine, 5 August 2026: https://www.blind-magazine.com/en/news/fifty-years-ago-joel-meyerowitz-tipped-into-the-light/ (Cape Light made with 'a Deardorff that left the workshop in 1938'; 'A wide-field Ektar lens of 250 millimeters'; 'a Vericolor II Type L rated at 80 ASA', used without the daylight filter; 'By day the exposure ran half a second at f/90', at the end of the day four to ten minutes; from the technical note that closes the book)
- The camera that captured Cape Cod light, Phaidon: https://www.phaidon.com/en-us/blogs/phaidon-archive/the-camera-that-captured-cape-cod-light ('In 1976 Meyerowitz acquired an 8x10 inch Deardorff view camera', used for the series published in 1978 as Cape Light)
- Stephen Shore, Lapis Press release for New York, 1974 (2023): https://lapispress.com/usr/library/documents/main/artists/59/shorepressrelease.pdf ('I spent the summer of 1974 traveling across America, photographing with an 8 x 10 view camera')
- Aaron Schuman, Uncommon Places: An Interview with Stephen Shore, SeeSaw Magazine, reprinted at aaronschuman.com: https://www.aaronschuman.com/shoreinterview.html ('All of '73 is 4x5', then the 8×10 on a tripod; 'when Kodak switched its film in '76 from Ektacolor to Vericolor, I had to learn a different palette')
- The American Prospects of 1965's Joel Sternfeld, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, November 1987: https://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/article/1987/11/1/the-american-prospects-of-1965s-joel-sternfeld (American Prospects made with 'a tripodmounted eight-by-ten-inch camera')
- Joel Sternfeld with Geoffrey Batchen, The Brooklyn Rail, December 2024: https://brooklynrail.org/2024/12/art/joel-sternfeld-with-geoffrey-batchen/ (the 8×10 as the 'best possible means available' for American Prospects, 'two negatives a day that entire first year'; on After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage: heat-sensitive film kept in the local firehouse, up 'at about 5 o'clock in the morning')
- Britt Salvesen, Transparencies, MACK, 2020: https://mackbooks.co.uk/blogs/news/tuesday-31-march-salvesen (Shore's 4×5 from 1973, a Graflex Crown Graphic and then a Cambo; 'Before long Shore was using an 8x10 camera (a Calumet, then Arca Swiss, then Deardorff)')
- Anna Kerrer Kivlan, William Eggleston: Who's Afraid of Magenta, Yellow and Cyan?, reposted by American Suburb X, July 2015: https://americansuburbx.com/2015/07/william-eggleston-whos-afraid-of-magenta-yellow-and-cyan.html (the Guide pictures made 'with a Leica', edited from carousels of slides)
- Kodak Color Dataguide, Eastman Kodak, 1980, via photomemorabilia.co.uk: https://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Colour_Darkroom/MFisher/Kodak_Color_DataGuide_1980.pdf (Kodacolor II ASA 100; Vericolor II Professional Type S ASA 125; Vericolor II Type L 100 at 1/50–1/5 s, 80 at 1 s, falling to 32 at 60 s; Kodachrome 25 and 64; Ektachrome 64, 200 and 400)
- Guénola Pellen, Fifty Years Ago, Joel Meyerowitz Tipped Into the Light, Blind Magazine, 5 August 2026: https://www.blind-magazine.com/en/news/fifty-years-ago-joel-meyerowitz-tipped-into-the-light/ (the Vericolor II Type L 'was balanced for tungsten and called for a filter in daylight'; 'Meyerowitz went without, correcting the color at the printing stage instead'; 'A telephone booth lit against the dusk')

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/new-color-photography/#sheet