William Eggleston is sometimes called “the father of color photography.” While his subject matter is banal, all his images contain very strong formal elements of line and shape. More to the point, they all emphasize saturated hues. In this paper I look at his dye transfer photographs and the quality of their color, which is unsurpassed by anyone in the medium even today. Primarily though, I focus on his most famous image Greenwood, Mississippi, commonly referred to as “The Red Ceiling,” which is known for its overwhelming, spectrally brilliant red tone. In my research, I look at Eggleston’s work from formalist and iconographic perspectives to see what it is that makes his images, which are devoid of traditional subject matter, so captivating. To do so, I compare “The Red Ceiling” and other Eggleston works to Ernst Haas’s formalist compositions. I compare each artist’s use of color and form to understand the different functions of each artists work. I argue that Eggleston’s images are not subjectless or banal, but that they are in fact heavily steeped in symbolism and comment on American urbanization and social dynamics.