Jeff Wall Photography Analysis - Research Paper Example

Jeff Wall Photography Analysis This research paper presents a critical discussion of Jeff Wall Photographs that were displayed at the Art Gallery of Western Australia between 26 May to 10 September 2012 using the writings of Barthes, Roland 1981, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Hill and Wang, New York, pp. 22-38 (Reference Paper I) and Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina 2003, 'Ugliness'. in Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (eds). Critical terms for Art History 2nd edn, Chicago University Press, Chicago and London, pp.281-295 (Reference Paper II). About the Artist and His Artwork Jeff Wall was born in Canada in 1946 and has been best known for art history writing and large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs. As if obsessed with natural decay, Jeff Wall is known to portray in photographs natural beauty and industrial fearlessness, normally as a backdrop, and postmodern themes in his works. A 1970-batch MA from the University of British Columbia, Jeff Wall did his postgraduation between 1970-73 at the Courtauld Institute. Between 1974-73 he worked as an assistant professor at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, then he moved to Simon Fraser University and worked there as an associate professor between 1976-87. With many years of teaching experience up his sleeve, he has published essays on Rodney Graham, Dan Graham, Roy Arden, Stephan Balkenhol, Ken Lum, On Kawara, and many more artists (Jeff, 2007). Initially he experimented with conceptual art and after he first produced his backlit transparencies in 1977, they came to be known as reflecting philosophical problems of representations. The Destroyed Room was the first of its kind "installation" rather than exhibition that he put in Nova Gallery's storefront window by way of a plasterboard wall. The Destroyed Room was one of the photographs at this exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. The other works included in this exhibition were After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hoksai) 1993, Night 2001, the Prologue 1999-2000, Boy Falls from Tree 2010, Knife Throw 2008 and Ivan Sayers. The exhibition had put together twenty-six of his most famous works which reflect his photographic innovation and artistic excellence. No wonder that Jeff Wall is being credited for having established photography as one of the most popular forms of contemporary art today. The photographs display his inventiveness with approach to each frame as diverse as it could get. Colour prints have been his recent forte, while earlier; he would experiment with luminous and large-scale photographs and transparencies in light boxes. Of notable reference is After "Invisible Man" for its quality of colour and sheer magical intensity. This is a classical example of juxtaposition of the depicted event, its poetics and formal composition that yields his art the essence of storytelling. It is a 'near' documentary experience built on conjuncture of memories. The pictorial reality manifests in a ethereal imaginative form in "Invisible Man". Ralph Ellison's After "Invisible Man" is laden with strange warmness and flood of light; light in which the narrative lives, in every flood of it and in 1,369 bulbs that have been used for illumination. The light is a witness to the man's reality, it gives him his form; in absence of the same, there is nothing but lack of form. After "Invisible Man" has a number of accompaniments like Rainfield Suitcase, 2001, which is a figure-less entity but creates mindboggling cinematography in the artwork. This picture resembles both a film still as well as a painting, which draws the viewer into specificity of the scene implying larger narratives. The cellar room as depicted in Wall's version has been able to capture the powerful intensity of warmness that is full of light. The light bathes the unnamed protagonist, who is not visible to the world. He is bathed in the bulbs that he stole from somewhere and wonders if there was any place as bright as his 'hole", the cellar. By attempting this photograph, wall gives a new dimension to light; he makes the viewer believe what it means to bask in so much of light, a manifestation of enlightenment and a new truth. The photographs invoke curiosity, are diverse and highly ambitious. What is more intriguing and also appealing about these photographs is that they are from situations that one comes across every day. In the words of Jeff Wall they are reconstructed incidents on observations that arise from everyday situations. Their quality invites attention and so does the enormity of their size. The photographs create such surreal moments that the viewer is compelled to live the experiences within them. In this way the photographs tell stores by juxtaposing the intensity, the colour and the size. There is a strange poetics that flows from the photographs giving rise to captivating pictorial realities. Analysis as per Reference Paper I: In order to analyse Jeff Wall's photographs through Roland's (1981, pp. 22-38) reflections on photography, it is important to understand the transition that Jeff Wall went through to become a photographer. The evolution is interesting. During his teens he began as an artist, working on minimalism. It wasn't until 1990s when Wall caught up with technological innovation, particularly digital software techniques, when he began working on montages digitally structured. Galassi (2007) has observed Wall's peculiar methods of working with images which, he states, reinterpreted art historical themes and in a sense "remade" artworks. What Galassi wants to communicate is that Jeff Wall re-creates images in context of modernism in such a manner that they satisfy the sensibilities that emerge from modernism. Galassi specifically mentions A Sudden Gust of Wind to explain his point and says this work is an example of art historical revision and quotation. He takes the critique of this photograph back to Katsushika Hokusai’s Nishike-e print, and argues that Jeff wall's 'Wind' is actually based on the same which, if translated, becomes 'A High Wind in Yeijiri, Surga Province'. That is an 1831-33 work. But one point that goes to the advantage of Jeff Wall's works is that the viewer does not need to travel back in time to understand the genesis of the photographs that are currently being shown to him. These photographs offer a rewarding experience even without going back to the stories behind them. Wall's artworks attempt shift from the conventional, a change that hasn't be heard of until he practiced it. His change lives through an 'experience' and what he wants to convey is that what matters is not the fundamental element in a work of art, but an experience that is lived through it. Through change he attempts to locate an interactivity, sort of inserting contemporary practice into something cultural. His change evolves into a new paradigm; that of relational art. The change is not to imply that art as an object has lost its meaning. What Jeff Wall does is that he retains the object and creates a dialectical process around it. The dialectical process communicates the experience. There is a unifying force working to strengthen between what was and what is. Jeff Wall's changes that lead to the juxtaposition of various elements in his pictures that become expressive objects compel both their observer and the artist to encounter each other in a new realm. So that way Jeff Wall's images refer to a fictive narrative. Another feature of Jeff Wall's photographs is that they offer a tableau nature which makes them absorptive and thus engrossing as composite frames. There is a level of longing that these photographs invoke and thus they don not only communicate photographs as a medium of art but also a medium of photography. This coincides with Roland's famous statement that photographs record reality, which he terms as 'the literal reality' and 'the perfect analogon' (Roland, 1977, p. 17). If these images are analysed through the lens of Roland Barthes, two things emerge: one, they reveal a truth that signals ‘lack of rightness’ and two, they reveal photography as a powerful medium of expression. In other words, the way Jeff wall handles subjects and re-creates themes, what emerges as an end result is photography as a creative medium rather than a mere documentation of the real. Jeff wall, that way, engages in what Roland terms as 'discourse of artifice'. If Roland is to be further applied to Jeff Wall's photographs, this element of 'not being right' makes Jeff Wall's photographs 'not actually photographs'. These take the position of a new class of images that are digitally-driven, hence rendering to them that 'not right' attribute. That is to say, in Roland's language, while a photograph is essentially a medium meant to capture reality, there also is some level of 'madness' that it portrays. That means a photograph does not have to be necessarily a hundred percent copy of the reality; many elements other than perceived in the reality can creep into it, and that is perfectly alright. This is what leads to 'perfect analogon' as described by Roland in Camera Lucida. The said madness can become part of this analogon. After the madness goes into the photograph, it tends to become a medium that is bizarre - bizarre because it now shares a level of hallucination, and a perception that is not necessarily all true but even false to some extent. The ‘mad images’ becomes chafed by reality (Roland, 1977, p. 117) That is not to say that Jeff Wall makes an attempt at elevating photography, like his predecessors did if spoken in context of history, but what he intends is to enlarge the scope of photography radically. In almost all these 2012 exhibits experiment has been spawned by erudition and he has expanded the room within what can be termed as tableau's guarded precincts to create a wider warp on the description of photography. Jeff Wall lets his frames foray into a maddeningly slippery ground in which he remakes the world in a photograph. The photographs appear as a viewer's mystery. Some of his shots are snapshot in quality, but at the same time yield an uneasy feeling by not being quite real. What can be seen as his final pictures, almost singular in presentation, are, in fact, many sets of digital manipulation. This lets them exude the feeling created by a narrative of the film, taking them into a different plane in which they appear more naturalistic in presentation. Jeff Wall's photographs appear as engineered, but engineered in a manner that they appear real. Despite the narrative comment, in many of Jeff Wall's photographs the viewer still gropes to interpret them. That actually gives the viewer the freedom to interpret his pictures in his own way. Each viewer writes a novel of his own on the Jeff wall photograph that he sees. The most unique feature of Jeff Wall's photographs is that, as Roland has remarked, it can never be distinguished from its referent or from what it represents. His photographs carry this referent along with in a funereal and amorous mobility. Each piece in an element is as if complementing the one next to it, glued together, almost limb by limb. His photographs depict the disorder of objects that is vastly writ over within each frame. No benchmark can be set as to why did Jeff Wall to shot what he did; he attempts to portray disorder in perfect order, in a manner that is so unclassified, so crude and yet so noble, so certain. While interpreting the photographs something seems invisible about them, probably that 'not right' part of it, and there is a nagging feeling that the viewer does not actually see what he sees. That is the hallmark of perfectionist artists. However, it is not that Jeff Wall in unbound by the materials that he uses. He is as much restricted by the same as any other artist would be. One of the limitations in his photographs is the printable size of the colour transparencies that he makes. He needs to incorporate a seam that is visible if the size exceeds fifty inches. The split in the composition thus is explicit. When expert viewers view image as a whole, they get distracted. But that is more of a technical limitation as is common with cibachrome. Here Jeff Wall plays a conveniently double standard; sometimes he embraces the crease consciously and sometimes he ignores it. When he embraces it, he gels it well with the whole composition. If analysed rightly, it is this split that sets Jeff Wall's work's production from photographic image. The intelligent use of materials in Jeff Wall’s photographs can be explained by A Sudden Gust of Wind. This draws inspiration from, as mentioned above, Katsushika Hokusai 's original which has further got reinforced by similar weather conditions that Jeff wall has been witness to. The two narrow trees leaning are a powerful medium to communicate the gust of wind; an effect that had been rendered more powerful by the mingling of dead leaves with pieces of papers floating in air. In Jeff Wall's photograph the elements that add to the sense of force exerted by the wind include a row of telegraph poles, small shacks and concrete piping and pillars giving the notion of industrial farming. The landscape is unromantic and is further rendered as such by use of corrugated iron structure in the background. This all sort of stands on a dirt track that extends from one side of the frame to another. Even as there seems to be no connection between materials used in the frame, since it all appears incongruous, the two figures wearing city clothes in a smart fashion add to the displacement sense in the photograph. At the time when Jeff Wall conceived this, he is reported to have said that he was in a deep crisis at the moment. The crisis was on account of the overpowering technological function in everyday life. It was finally an illuminated sign somewhere that triggered his creative outburst and A Sudden Gust of Wind was born (Barets, 1988, p. 99). This photograph became and the method that was used became Jeff Wall's signature in years to come; in the early works like The Destroyed Room, however, he took resorted to a direct inspiration from master paintings that were old. With A Sudden Gust of Wind he began what can be considered as representation of 'painted drama' in which tableaus contained actors representing models and worked up through use of landscapes and contemporary technology. This photograph, and many others in the exhibition, thus, remains politically engaging. His use of technology took further impetus from him from early 1990s when he began to put together photographic constituents to make collages using digital manipulation. Analysis as per Reference Paper II: Jeff Wall's The Destroyed Room is not an artwork that should appear as pleasing to the viewer in the first place. It is room full of clutter representing broken pieces of wood, some shacks, walls on which paint has peeled off and a haphazard bundle of old clothes. In other words it denotes uncanny ugliness rather than the expected beauty. But, still, it is one of the most talked about works of Jeff Wall. Could it be that its ugliness is its greatest beauty? Could it be that, as someone has remarked, that it lives up to that adage 'ugliness makes the beauty attractive'? Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer has said that 'ugliness is an aesthetic category that stands at the opposite of beauty'. If Western moral and aesthetic thought is understood in the right earnest, beauty in combination with ugliness, two dialectic polarities that together form the backbone of the same. That is to say that if beauty is an ideal, truth, reason, perfection, order, clarity, harmony and reason; it is only a half of this all if not contrasted by ugliness that is a repository, everything, but which does not fit into all these attributes. Ugliness, that way, stays outside of this frame of beauty, or even within it, which is responsible for giving beauty its expression. Jeff Wall's works have lived through a crucial period of art. They have been part of the contested terrain that art is and are, to some extent, influenced by increased interest in "art history" and "art" during 1970s when this discipline was dramatically transformed in terms of its development and critical theory. While his works allure, they also portray some level of disorder too. In the words of Adorno, 1997, p.46) "the ugly is that element that opposes the work's ruling law of form; it is integrated by that formal law and thereby confirms it". In what appears, Jeff wall's works contain many faces; thus synonymous with that unique ugliness that contains many faces too. While the beautiful side of his works is communicated by rationalism, unity and coherence, the ugliness represents, again in the words of Adorno, "primacy of the particular". Both are backed by the respective historical contexts that stem from issues of value, hierarchy and power. Both are, in a way, articulated in political and cultural meanings. While beauty is dominant, ugliness is submissive. Beauty represents high social, racial and aesthetic ideologies and ugliness represents marginality. Adorno has stated that beauty being elitist was forced on people, while ugliness is primordial, chaotic, raw, foetal, unformed. A first look at Jeff Wall's works and one realises how true this must be of his works. There is an undercurrent of chaos behind the opulence of sublimit that they represent. Could it be because Jeff Wall is aware that ugliness being what came first should be preceded by beauty and not the other way round? Ugliness has emerged as a winner over beauty in the history of modern art, which contains 'abject' and 'formless' elements in plenty. Jeff wall's works seem to reflect that breakdown of symbiotic, harmonic tension between beauty and ugliness. Ugliness, as reflected in disorder in Jeff Wall's works, has been a 20th century artistic current. In what seems to be apparent in Jeff Wall's works, he approaches his works with conceptual artistry, giving more weightage to content than form. Ugly moments are generally the starting points and mostly unnerving too, but as the theme progresses they appear as clear reconstructions. The ugliness, the chaos in his works is not only incidental, it has a historical context attached to it. His works were forged at a time when practice and history of art were undergoing upheavals - in late 1960s. After shifting to London, he immersed himself in both radical theory and conceptual art by following such greats as Louis Althusser and Walter Benjamin. His skills were further honed by the Frankfurt School (Ure-Smith, 2014). Because of this ugliness element, it would be justified to say that some of his works exude melancholy. Chevrier (2006a: 13) argues that Jeff wall has his own sympathetic side to offer for such interpretation. However, some critics have remarked that such frames invoke aversion (Gierstberg 1998: 3). Chevrier has remarked on Jeff Wall's photographs that they contain dramatic unity of many elements put together. A Sudden Gust of Wind can again be taken for analysis here. There are many elements in the frame that are in complete disarray; a desolate landscape, men cowering from wind, and a surprise element - two people there for a meeting in what seems to be a rural scene. Despite the disarray there is still a captivating uncertainty lingering in the picture. While there is action in replete in the frame, there is ambivalent boredom too - everything flies around and two men inching towards each other. As said above, each viewer would interpret this photograph in his own way; which can be construed as multidirectional forces exerting their mental influence on his works. The result is ambiguity; ambiguity cannot be beautiful. It may not even be ugly, but it certainly is disturbing. There is an uncertainty that confuses actuality and performance. It is perhaps this grim narrative in Jeff Wall's works that communicate that tethering uneasiness. There is something forlorn about his characters, photographic scenarios are moody and the works still manage to be enervating and enigmatic, farcical and cruel, and banal and monumental - all at once. There is a meanness, ugliness and coldness in the works, though more pronounced in some than others, yet they manage to demand attention with complete élan. Jeff Wall is certainly aware of this and play it up suiting the mood of the work. However, what brings symmetry in all of his works is one thing that they have in common. Whether print, light box, black-and-white or colour, there is a homogeneity size of all. References Adorno, T. W. (1997). Aesthetic Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, N. (2003), 'Ugliness'. in Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (eds). Critical terms for Art History 2nd edn, Chicago University Press, Chicago and London, pp.281-295. Barents, E. (1986), Jeff Wall: Transparencies, Munich 1986 Jeff Wall, exhibition catalogue, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1995, pp.14-15. Chevrier, Jean-François (2006a), Jeff Wall. Hazan, Paris. Galassi, P. (2007), “Unorthodox,” in Jeff Wall, exh. cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 52. Gierstberg, F. (1998), Dismal Science. An Interview with Allan Sekula. In: Allan Sekula. Dead Letter Office, Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam , 1-9. Jeff, W. (2007). Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Kerry, B. (1997). Jeff Wall, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, pp.26 and 34. Roland, B. (1981), Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Hill and Wang, New York, pp. 22-38. Roland B. (1977), “The Photographic Message,” in Image, Music, Text, trans. by Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 17. Roland B. (1977), “The Photographic Message,” in Image, Music, Text, trans. by Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 117. Ure-Smith, J. (2014), New artistic directions for photographer Jeff Wall in Amsterdam. Available: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/47d5e1e2-9328-11e3-b07c-00144feab7de.html#axzz31kgZNMg3. Accessed 8 May 2014. Read More

The light is a witness to the man's reality, it gives him his form; in absence of the same, there is nothing but lack of form. After "Invisible Man" has a number of accompaniments like Rainfield Suitcase, 2001, which is a figure-less entity but creates mindboggling cinematography in the artwork. This picture resembles both a film still as well as a painting, which draws the viewer into specificity of the scene implying larger narratives. The cellar room as depicted in Wall's version has been able to capture the powerful intensity of warmness that is full of light.

The light bathes the unnamed protagonist, who is not visible to the world. He is bathed in the bulbs that he stole from somewhere and wonders if there was any place as bright as his 'hole", the cellar. By attempting this photograph, wall gives a new dimension to light; he makes the viewer believe what it means to bask in so much of light, a manifestation of enlightenment and a new truth. The photographs invoke curiosity, are diverse and highly ambitious. What is more intriguing and also appealing about these photographs is that they are from situations that one comes across every day.

In the words of Jeff Wall they are reconstructed incidents on observations that arise from everyday situations. Their quality invites attention and so does the enormity of their size. The photographs create such surreal moments that the viewer is compelled to live the experiences within them. In this way the photographs tell stores by juxtaposing the intensity, the colour and the size. There is a strange poetics that flows from the photographs giving rise to captivating pictorial realities. Analysis as per Reference Paper I: In order to analyse Jeff Wall's photographs through Roland's (1981, pp. 22-38) reflections on photography, it is important to understand the transition that Jeff Wall went through to become a photographer.

The evolution is interesting. During his teens he began as an artist, working on minimalism. It wasn't until 1990s when Wall caught up with technological innovation, particularly digital software techniques, when he began working on montages digitally structured. Galassi (2007) has observed Wall's peculiar methods of working with images which, he states, reinterpreted art historical themes and in a sense "remade" artworks. What Galassi wants to communicate is that Jeff Wall re-creates images in context of modernism in such a manner that they satisfy the sensibilities that emerge from modernism.

Galassi specifically mentions A Sudden Gust of Wind to explain his point and says this work is an example of art historical revision and quotation. He takes the critique of this photograph back to Katsushika Hokusai’s Nishike-e print, and argues that Jeff wall's 'Wind' is actually based on the same which, if translated, becomes 'A High Wind in Yeijiri, Surga Province'. That is an 1831-33 work. But one point that goes to the advantage of Jeff Wall's works is that the viewer does not need to travel back in time to understand the genesis of the photographs that are currently being shown to him.

These photographs offer a rewarding experience even without going back to the stories behind them. Wall's artworks attempt shift from the conventional, a change that hasn't be heard of until he practiced it. His change lives through an 'experience' and what he wants to convey is that what matters is not the fundamental element in a work of art, but an experience that is lived through it. Through change he attempts to locate an interactivity, sort of inserting contemporary practice into something cultural.

His change evolves into a new paradigm; that of relational art. The change is not to imply that art as an object has lost its meaning. What Jeff Wall does is that he retains the object and creates a dialectical process around it. The dialectical process communicates the experience. There is a unifying force working to strengthen between what was and what is. Jeff Wall's changes that lead to the juxtaposition of various elements in his pictures that become expressive objects compel both their observer and the artist to encounter each other in a new realm.

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