Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer who is famous for his large scale, cinematic, backlit cibachromes.
Wait, wait, wait—let me back up for a second. A backlit what? A Cibachrome is a “dye construction positive-to-positive photographic process used for the production of slides on photographic paper.” Thank you, Wikipedia! So, essentially, Wall is known for installing his works as phototransparencies, each one individually lit to expose its color purity and image clarity.
I could talk about Wall’s numerous awards and academic accolades. I could talk about his wide array of published essays. However, all I’ll say is that the man isn’t failing in the achievements department. Instead, I’d rather talk about why Jeff Wall deserves such notoriety.
Wall plans and composes most of his shots, but they all have a very cinematic style. He explores the history of representation in art (Mimic is famous for its racial undertones), and contemporary culture in his staged photos. Wall is based on conceptual art, and sure, his work goes beyond photography—his work includes sculptural design and even some digital manipulation inside the frame. He tests the boundaries of forms, both in human and in inanimate object subjects. For example, Milk captures a man tosses a glass of the said liquid. Wall stated in his 1989 essay, “A natural form, with its unpredictable contours is an expression of infinitesimal metamorphoses of quality. Photography seems perfectly adapted for representing this kind of movement or form.” I can appreciate Wall’s work because it goes beyond just the cinema “scope”. If that were all I was interested in, I would have just stuck to make moving images—I would have concentrated on frames that move 1/24 of a second. Instead, what I love about the medium of photography is what is frozen, what is encapsulated at a moment. A professor once told me that a photograph captures what is now dead at the moment right before it was about to die, and makes it live forever. I love how Wall never lets go of these moments. He combines he love for the conceptual and the cinema in his pieces.
In contrast, I see Gregory Crewdson’s work to be much more one-dimensional. Crewdson’s work, even right down to the elaborate productions, is all about the cinema. Looking at one of his photographs makes me wish I were just watching the movie that’s based on it. It’s less about the concept and more about its advertising qualities. They’re movie posters.
I also love how there is a quality of street photography and reportage in Jeff Wall’s work. His studio is the world, essentially. He uses the world and its natural habits as his inspiration and recreates them. The photos are captivating even when I look at them online. I’ve never had the chance to see the actual light boxes, but I can still imagine they’re aural qualities. Jeff Wall is the ultimate. Some people consider portraits as headshots. Well, I don’t. Wall’s portraits are slices of life, lit (yes, that’s a pun) by the social attitudes of his subjects, or the culture surrounding the object(s) in the frame.
Mimic
Milk
Photograph by Gregory Crewdson
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