Jeff Wall

"Canadian Photographer best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs, Wall's work advances an argument for the necessity of pictorial art. Some of Wall's photographs are complicated productions involving cast, sets, crews and digital postproduction. They have been characterized as one-frame cinematic productions. Wall distinguishes between unstaged "documentary" pictures, like Still Creek, Vancouver, winter 2003, and "cinematographic" pictures, produced using a combination of actors, sets, and special effects, such as Overpass, 2001. His signature works are large transparencies mounted on light boxes; he says he conceived this format when he saw back-lit advertisements at bus stops during a trip between Spain and London."

Jeff Wall talks about his piece Milk. “In Milk, as in some of my other pictures, an important part is played by complicated natural forms. The explosion of the milk from the container takes a shape which is not really describable or characterizable, but which provokes many associations. 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 think this is because the mechanical character of the action of opening and closing the shutter-the substratum of instantaneity which persists in all photography-is the concrete opposite kind of movement from, for example, the flow of a liquid.”

Interview with David Shapiro

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/museo/3/jeffwall.htm

Johnen + Schöttle Gallery

http://www.johnen-schoettle.de/artists.htm