Your Daily Awesome

The Smithsonian tracked down Karen Chatham and Lesa Aldridge, the subjects of this 1973 Memphis photograph by William Eggleston.

As the bars closed at 3 a.m., the two followed some other revelers to a friend’s house nearby. In the mix was a 30-something man who had been taking pictures all night. “I always thought of Bill as just like us,” Karen says today, “until years later, when I realized that he was famous.”

Lesa recalls that the picture was taken on the night before she left home for her freshman year at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her mother had made the red dress, patterning it after an Austrian folk costume. At the after-hours party, Karen was crying and “really distraught about some boy trouble,” Lesa remembers. In order to talk in private, they went into a bathroom, where Karen somehow managed to fall into a bathtub full of water. After she dried off, she put on a blue velour robe that was hanging behind the door. Then the two camped out in the next room and resumed talking.

“Suddenly, in the periphery, I heard Eggleston say, ‘Oh, what a beautiful picture,’” Lesa says. “And then people were setting up lights and it was like Hollywood or something.” Neither young woman paid them much heed. “I was just in that little world with Karen,” Lesa says. “I was so used to Eggleston taking pictures everywhere we went that summer that it didn’t even faze me,” Karen says.

Christian Patterson, from whose blog I nicked this post, asks the question: “Does learning the story behind a photograph change your perception and appreciation of the image? Is mystery important? Does it kill the mystery?” My answer: It depends on the photograph, and it depends on the story.