Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall is a Canadian born artist who is well known for his large-scale backlit Cibachrome photographs. His photographs usually deal with subject matter that mixes natural beauty with urban decay and postmodern and industrial backdrops that are undistinguished. While Wall is known for large scale photographs of contemporary everyday scenes he also became interested in still life’s, for example his piece entitled, “Octopus and Beans” where he has a diptych of two desks one image has an octopus on the desk and the other image has beans on the desk. Most of his work is done in his hometown of Vancouver. Wall usually stages his photos and often alludes to historical artworks such as his piece entitled, “A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai)” which was done in 1993 and mimics Katsushika Hokusai, “Yejiri Station” which was done about 1832 and shows people walking over a land bridge as papers fly up and behind the people shown above and shows a strong resemblance to Hokusai’s piece. Since the 1990’s Wall has used digital technology to create montages. In 2007 he exhibited many of the above works at the MOMA in New York. The piece I learned about while taking History of Photography was his photo entitled, “Dead Troops Talk” done in 1992 and Wall thought of special effects and black humor combining to create this image, he wanted to create an amusement which would help the viewer to detach from the immediate surrounding, and to make you reflect on humanity and it’s imperfection. I’m personally not a huge fan of the photographs themselves but understand the significance of Wall as a contemporary artist and how he has influenced other artists. I do appreciate the way he displays his works by printing large and on transparencies that are set in aluminum light boxes. Newer works include “Boxing” 2011 shown above with the two boys boxing in their living room and “Pawn Shop” 2009, which display his love for staging and showing the everyday.