A small room in a small Mississippi town, 1973. A red ceiling, one bare bulb, three white cords — and almost nobody who sees it ever forgets it.

Today, for the first time on this show, an entire episode about one single photograph: William Eggleston's The Red Ceiling. On paper it's the most Eggleston subject imaginable — it's nothing, the upper corner of a room, the place your eyes go when you can't sleep. So how does nothing become unforgettable? The answer comes in three parts: a color, a craft, and a friend. The color skips the reading line entirely and goes straight to the body. The craft is dye-transfer, advertising's ultimate print aimed at a ceiling until the red saturates — Eggleston says he's never once seen it reproduced to his satisfaction, and describes the real thing in words nobody will ever beat: when you look at the ...