JEFF WALL - A Closer Look
In a society hooked on immediate gratification, it’s sometimes difficult to imagine we’re all on our own individual timelines. And no that’s not a reference to social media, it’s a reference to the way we view modern art.
Today’s culture of ever-renewed digital imagery makes for poor attention spans, and all that’s required from us and our iPhones, is to glance (and then forget) from a sedentary position. Jeff Wall, the champion of slow looking art, is a refreshing segway from the din of modern technology. His work requires study and prolonged meditation, and viewing his oeuvre proves nearly impossible to distill into one common thread.
Often comprised of fewer images in the collections and exhibitions, those who experience Jeff Wall’s photographs are actively decelerated upon viewing. Such a range of subject matter forces a crystallisation of attention — often his large scale digital montages require minute observation to digest meaning. Wall has said of his work that he aims to provoke an unshackling of political and personal bias; viewers are urged to openly consider the other possibilities within the narrative.
Perhaps best known for his suspense-filled constructions of ordinary life, Jeff Wall’s works are always rich and exquisite with cultural reference. He has delved into classical reportage photography to elaborate constructions and montages — constructions in the sense of formulating around the fleeting moment, something reportage by nature cannot do. Wall distills the essentials of photography and embraces other art forms of literature, painting, and cinema. He calls this mode of working “cinematography”.
Born 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he still resides, he became involved in photography in the 1960s — the palmy days of conceptual art — and from the 1970s onwards his motivations were progressive. Wall pursued the spirit of conceptualism and thus furthered his own brand of pictorial photography.
Initially his pictures were made as backlit colour transparencies, a medium synonymous with publicity and the media, rather than photographic art. These works revolutionised the relationship the public had with colour photography, cementing it as an important aspect of aesthetics in photography.
A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) is a large colour photograph displayed in a light box. The landscape, flat and open, depicts foreground figures frozen at the mercy of a blustery wind. The work is inspired and built around a woodcut named Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri (c. 1832) from a revered portfolio, The Thirty-six Views of Fuji, by Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).
“The only way to continue in the spirit of the
avant-garde is to experiment with your relation to tradition,” — Jeff Wall
A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai). 1993.
Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri (c.1832)
Another seminal photograph by Jeff Wall is his grotesque fiction, or ‘hallucination’ of wounded soldiers in Afghanistan. The troops are Soviet patrol soldiers who were ambushed during the occupation of the 1980s. Titled Dead Troops Talk, the soldiers are suddenly reanimated and brought back from the dead. The image mixes pathos with black humour — a desert vision of orchestrated horror and fantasy. The artist refers to this piece as “a dialogue of the dead”. When scanning the image, each figure or group appear to respond differently; some, in agony, others clowning around with their wounds — an invocation of the macabre.
Dead Troops Talk (A vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter (1986) 1992
In articulating why he created this image, the artist outlined the idea of black humour being just as plausible a response, compared to the reaction of the other comrades distressed or overcome with pain. The picture was captured in a large photography studio, with teams of set designers and professional make up artists.
Other notable works is The Destroyed Room 1978, a construction that harks back to nineteenth century painting, in particular The Death of Sardanapalus 1827, by Eugène Delacroix. The painting depicts the Assyrian monarch on his deathbed, overseeing the destruction of his possessions and slaughtering of his mistresses, or concubines, in a last act of defiance against his invaders. Wall’s image mimics the composition of destruction and chaos, laden with a palette of sumptuous blood reds. Of his studio constructed image he comments: “Through the door you can see that it’s only a set held up by supports, that this is not a real space, this is no-one’s house,”.
The Death of Sardanapalus 1827
The Destroyed Room 1978
Perhaps one of Wall’s most famous works is Mimic 1982 — a large colour-print format camera, not the ideal counterpart to capturing fleeting moments on the streets. Yet he wanted to explore colour street photography in the same vein as artists like Gary Winogrand and Robert Frank. Wall’s aim was to re-stage such moments with the use of non-professional actors, claiming the immediacy of those street photographers before him. He called these constructed images “cinematographic photographs”.
In Mimic Wall presents the good guy vs. the bad guy scenario. A scene he witnessed on a Vancouver street where a racial slur was uttered. Here the ‘bad guy’ on the right is seen with slanted eyes towards the ‘good guy’, clearly making his remark.
Jeff Wall’s work subverts the classical function of photograph, a process he calls “near-documentary”. Jeff Wall aims to see in pictorial terms, suppressing the urge to narrate, like the function of classical photography. He says in an interview: “The viewers write the poem that the artists erases in the process of making a picture” going on to say: “people re-narrate non- narrative things”. His work is to “not write” something he terms as a “literary antipathy”.
Mimic 1982
“I think all artists are sympathetic people.
They’re sympathetic to being”
— Jeff Wall
Thank you for reading,
Kieran McMullan & Cluster Photography & Print Journal