Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer who focusses on contemporary, cinematic images. Often, he uses classical pieces of art in order to inform his own work. He claims he doesn't want to capture memory but instead, bring back memories to the viewer, and that it's his memories and experiences that influence the making of the work. This is similar to how and why I am making my images, and so I decided to research more about his work. I feel that understanding it will also help me understand my work better, as well as seeing how others use similar ways of working.

Wall says that his work has a definite painterly quality, in the sense that he is continuously trying things, making decisions and planning the composition of his photographs much as a painter would have to make. However, he also says that they have the standard photographic snapshot quality, in the sense that he attempts to capture what seem to be normal, everyday moments of life to the point that the images appear candid. The combination of both of these aspects causes him to label his work as 'near documentary'. 

A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), Jeff Wall, 1993

This image is seen as an appropriation of Yejiri Station, Province of Suruga by Katsushika Hokusai (1832), a woodblock colour print that Wall saw to be extremely cinematic. The image shows 4 people whose day has been disrupted by this sudden gust of wind, that has caused papers to go flying in the sky and created this extraordinary moment for us to see. The image feels and looks very candid, however, the image is actually very staged, taking about 100 images that have been cut up and merged together in order to make this final photograph. The image has been modernised, allowing a viewer to relate to it now, and making it seem more 'real' to us as the viewer. It has also been westernised, or at least more generalised, as he has removed the mountain and Japanese influence from the image. This also removes some of the romance from an image, it's far less idyllic and typically beautiful. We are presented with brown fields, and in the distance industrial pillars - farmland. The image retains, however, the same sense of motion that the original woodblock had that inspired him so much, and the same principle. We still question who these people are just as much as the art that it was based on, we still wonder what their day was supposed to be and how this event has changed those plans. It still poses the same questions over 150 years later in a different medium. As based on the original, the viewer looks at the images as if viewing it happen from afar. We are not part of the event, but instead watching it occur and having to leave these men to deal with the consequences. The colours have been altered to match the more earthy tones of the woodblock image, as well as create this cinematic atmosphere. The atmosphere is chaotic, with parts of clothing flapping in the wind, hunched poses, bent trees and of course the many papers flying in the air. It's removed from the every day, where the people would be just walking along the bank of the river. This chaos gives us many aspects of the image to look at, which is why it works so well blown up so large, as Wall presents it. For example, we notice that there are two figured in business attire, and with our previous deduction of the location being farmland, these two figures seem rather out of place, again posing more questions on who these people are and why they are here. The tree in the image gives us a sizing reference for the rest of the image, as well as leading our eye into the sky to find more of the papers. It breaks the perfect lines going across the image made but the bank of the river, and the horizon meeting the sky. This all causes an image that flows, it is free of rigidity. The result of all of this work, the 5 months of shooting and all of the planning results in an image that resembles a classical painting. 

Yejiri Station, Province of Suruga by Katsushika Hokusai (1832)

Picture for Women, Jeff Wall (1979)

The second image that I want to discuss is Picture for Women. This image, rather than appropriating a painting as such, is seen as a response to Manet's Un bar aux Folies Bergère (1882). Manet's painting depicts a barmaid who looks out of frame, in a mirrored scene. To the right of the painting is a man, a mysterious figure. In Wall's image, one may at first think he has modernised the image, having the setting as a studio, modern clothing worn and of course the camera technology - however I would argue that he has adjusted the concept and the message behind the image. See, in this photograph, Wall has turned the image into a self-portrait, for he now takes the position of the man to the right of the image. Wall has shifted the woman, who now looks directly at the viewer, to the side and instead her central place is taken by the camera. The work then becomes a discussion about photography by challenging the medium and the process of photography. It visually shows the process of how an image is made, the lens looks right at us in a confrontational manner, all while keeping the structural integrity of the image he is referencing and replying to. The camera in this image has advanced from just being a tool to make the image but is a character within the image itself. The camera is given a relationship with cinema, painting and when presented in a 3D lightbox form, sculpture. Art critic Jed Perl claims that the piece "it doubles as a portrait of the late-twentieth-century artist in his studio.". 
The woman in this photograph has the same posture and facial expressions of the barmaid from Manet's painting, again keeping the base of the original within this reinterpretation. The sense of depth that we experience in Manet's painting in the reflection is given to us in the photograph by the studio lights in the background.
While I really love this photograph, it's not what is in the image that interests me most, it's the concept and the way that he has used famous work to not only reimagine but to create a dialogue and conversation - in this case about photography and transparency.

Un bar aux Folies Bergère, Manet (1882)

Overall, I find myself really interested in the relationship that Jeff Wall has with painting, how he interprets that relationship into his photographs. It's incredibly relevant to what I'm doing with my own project, where I use past paintings in order to influence my own work, and create a more modernised piece with strong ties to the originals. The way he presents these in huge lightboxes, which I will speak more of in a post about presentation ideas, only strengthens this is as it again modernises the piece by having relations with pop culture and advertising, but also retains the scale of these incredible classical paintings he found himself so taken away with. This, as well as how Wall utilises painting to create photographs and the different kind of relationship a photograph can have with painting, is something I will need to keep in mind.