Brief
Photography, like film and unlike painting and other art forms, relies on what’s in front of the camera for its content, so the props, clothes, location and setting have to be right for the time period and the story. Setting up a shot can be an arduous job. Many photographers working in this genre (known as tableaux) produce a single image at a time.
One example is Jeff Wall. Do some research online into Wall’s exhibition at the Tate Modern, 2005.
Looking through the images I decided to pick out the ones that immediately appealed to me without asking myself why. (Fig 1-12. Jeff Wall 1978-2004)
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Fig.1 Jeff Wall. A woman with a covered tray, (2003)
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Fig.2 Jeff Wall. Citizen (1996)
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Fig.3 Jeff Wall. Diagonal Composition 2 (1993)
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Fig.4 Jeff Wall. Diagonal Composition (1993)
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Fig.5 Jeff Wall Overpass (2001)
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Fig.6 Jeff Wall. Passerby 1996
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Fig.7 Jeff Wall. Picture for Women (1979)
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Fig.8 Jeff Wall Volunteer 1996
I then wrote down my immediate thoughts on first seeing each one.
Fig.1 – I wondered what was on the tray and where the person was going. Was it food from room service in a hotel being taken to a guest, was it some kind of medical equiptment in a hospital being taken to a patient or perhaps someones dead pet being taken away by a family member? I found this image quite intriguing! On further research I discovered that this image is an example of his “near documentary” The image was created using two scenes, the woman and the tray and the garden, brought together. It is based on an event that Wall witnessed and recreated from memory.
Fig.2 – This image made me fell like I was in the park but shouldn’t be, and also why the man appeared to be quite at ease lying down in the middle of a public space. It seemed strange that there was no one else around. I seemed to be at ease as if he felt he belonged. In her essay “A Civil state of Emergency” (2011) Ariella Azouley gives her account.
“Ever since seeing Wall’s photograph at Documenta 10 in 1997, whenever I see anyone asleep in a public park—whether someone homeless or someone, like the man in this image, who looks like he or she has a home to go to—I cannot help thinking of him or her as claiming a share in a public space” (Azoulay, 2011)
The text from the Tate website includes a reference to the voyeuristic nature of the image
“Like most of Wall’s work, the photograph relates directly to the scale of the viewer’s body. We seem to be placed on the fringes of the park, at the bottom of the picture, a device that encourages us to feel both physically and almost voyeuristically involved” (Tate 2005)
Fig.3,4 – I was attracted to these two images because of the muted colours, tones, shapes and lines. I am always attracted to shapes and lines (particularly in architecture) so that made sense to me. There was a feeling of decay, with the tones and colours giving a sense of coming from an era long gone. There is a sadness about them. The Tates text gives an account of these images which was surprisingly close to my own (apart from the reference to other artists)
“The works entitled Diagonal Composition continue Wall’s exploration of the still-life genre, but in this case draw inspiration from early twentieth-century art, particularly the abstract images of artists such as El Lissitzky, Theo van Doesburg, and Alexander Rodchenko, whose paintings typically comprised grids of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines.
Documentary-style photographs of old, neglected spaces and cleaning areas are an ongoing theme in Wall’s work. These discovered scenes focus attention on the ordinary and overlooked, or as Wall puts it, on ‘the unattributed, anonymous poetry of the world’. At a formal level they echo the interlocking lines and bands of colour employed by the early pioneers of abstract art, but they also invite a social reading. Capturing the long passage of time that has scarred and degraded these surfaces, they evoke traces of lives lived by unknown inhabitants” (Tate 2005)
I had a look at the artists that Walls inspiration was drawn from. El Lissitzky (Fig.13), Theo van Doesburg (Fig 14), and Alexander Rodchenko (Fig. 15)
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Fig.9 El Lissitzky New Man 1923
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Fig.10 Theo van Doesburg Composition in Half-Tones (1928) Kunstmuseum Basel
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Fig.11 Aleksandr Rodchenko. Composition No. 47 (1917)
Fig.5 – I was initially attracted to this image because of the bright sunlit scene with the blue and grey stormy backdrop. I then became curious about what the people were up to. Where were they going?, had something happened? Are they tourists or displaced? I get the feeling that they are not particularly happy. Their heads are down, perhaps against a coming storm (weather or other physical or physiological event) They have quite a lot of luggage and give an impression of carrying all their worldly goods. They seem burdened in the physical and mental sense!
“Four people carrying luggage and parcels walk away from the viewer. With their backs to us, the figures are anonymous; they might betravellers visiting the city, or nomads moving through it. A subtle palette of cool greys and blues unites the whole, from the clothes and baggage to the surprising forms of a suddenly stormy sky. As the road stretches into the far distance, the picture evokes a mood of pilgrimage, both physical and emotional, or perhaps of exile. Overpass continues the thread of ‘street pictures’ Wall initiated 25 years earlier, but in a more muted key” (Tate 2005)
Fig. 6 – Although I was aware that this image was staged, it has an air of reality about it. Street photography, documentary, film noir? Lit seemingly by the headlights of a passing car, there is something sinister about it.The shadows and the way the man is looking behind him as he hurries on. Is he being followed? Is there a person behind the tree?
“In 1996, after about twenty years of working exclusively in colour, Wall turned to black-and-white photography, a medium traditionally associated with the documentary style. Though he continued to work with actors and collaborators, these photographs are marked by their casual, snapshot appearance. In them Wall challenges and reassesses ideas of photographic ‘authenticity” (Tate 2005)
Fig.7 – It took me a while to work out what was going on here. The refection caused me a bit of confusion and although the camera is slap bang in the middle of the frame I didn’t see it for quite a while. In that time looking at the image I got the impression that the man in the image was a reflection of the viewer. I find the image a bit disconcerting and to me the woman looks a bit worried. More worried once I worked out that it was a mirror behind her and not space. Although the camera was quite hard to see at first, I did question why he didn’t hide it behind the model. Wall updates the theme by positioning the camera at the centre of the work, so that it captures the act of making the image (the scene reflected in the mirror) and, at the same time, looks straight out at us” (Tate 2005)
“Picture for Women was inspired by Edouard Manet’s masterpiece A Bar at the Folies-Bergères1881–2. In Manet’s painting, a barmaid gazes out of frame, observed by a shadowy male figure. The whole scene appears to be reflected in the mirror behind the bar, creating a complex web of viewpoints. Wall borrows the internal structure of the painting, and motifs such as the light bulbs that give it spatial depth. The figures are similarly reflected in a mirror, and the woman has the absorbed gaze and posture of Manet’s barmaid, while the man is the artist himself. Though issues of the male gaze, particularly the power relationship between male artist and female model, and the viewer’s role as onlooker, are implicit in Manet’s painting, Wall updates the theme by positioning the camera at the centre of the work, so that it captures the act of making the image (the scene reflected in the mirror) and, at the same time, looks straight out at us” (Tate 2005)
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Fig.7 Jeff Wall. Picture for Women (1979)
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Fig.12 Edouard Manet. A Bar at the Folies-Bergères1881–2.
“This painting was Manet’s last major work. It represents the bustling interior of one of the most prominent music halls and cabarets of Paris, the Folies-Bergère. The venue opened in 1869 and its atmosphere was described as “unmixed joy”. In contrast, the barmaid in Manet’s representation is detached and marooned behind the bar.” (Tate)
Fig 8 – after an initial quick look through the images I didn’t realise there were two “cleaning” images.(Fig. 8,12).
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Fig.8 Jeff Wall Volunteer 1996
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Fig.12 Jeff Wall Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona 1999
Figure 8 looks very authentic, and a bit sad. The man looks like he either hasn’t noticed the camera or just doesn’t care and would rather just get on with his work. The back and white seem to add to the drabness and sadness coming from the image although in reality it might be brightly coloured.
“This picture was based on Wall’s observations of homeless shelters and similar facilities, but was shot on a set. The mural on the right-hand wall, a precise replica of one in an actual shelter, was painted for the photograph. It emphasises the potential in black-and-white photography for registering subtle gradations of tone. The man sweeping the floor appears absorbed in his task, in a mood and world of his own. The impression is of a chance glimpse into someone else’s life” (Tate 2005)
Figure 13 has a very different feel. Sunlight and space and colour and clean lines all contribute to making it a completely different image. Both images are showing work that would wound normal be interested in.
“The subject of Morning Cleaning is an iconic example of modernist architecture, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s pavilion for the International Exhibition of 1929, held in Barcelona. The pavilion was reconstructed in the 1980s and is now permanently open to the public. Wall was interested in the labour required to maintain the brilliance and transparency of the building, with its signature glass walls and marble surfaces. We see the pavilion’s cleaner at work early in the morning before the building opens – another example of the artist’s interest in activities which are normally unseen or overlooked” (Tate 2005)
Working through some of Walls images in this way has been very productive in lots of ways including, reading photographs, understanding the ideas around staging and also a great insight in the use of other artists as inspiration.
Bibliography
Figures 1-8 Jeff Wall (1978-2004)
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/jeff-wall/jeff-wall-room-guide [Images]
[Accessed 6 April 2021].
Azoulay, A., 2011. A Civil State of Emergency—a photoessay by Ariella Azoulay. [online] Versobooks.com.
Available at: <https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/918-a-civil-state-of-emergency-a-photoessay-by-ariella-azoulay>
[Accessed 6 April 2021].
Figure 9. El Lissitzky. New Man (1923)
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/el-lissitzky-1519 [Image]
[Accessed 8 April 2021].
Figure 10. Theo van Doesburg. Composition in Half-Tones (1928)
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/van-doesburg-and-international-avant-garde/van-doesburg-and-8 [Image]
[Accessed 8 April 2021].
Figure 11. Aleksandr Rodchenko Composition No. 47 (1917)
Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/12/aleksandr-rodchenkos-lines-of-force [Image]
[Accessed 8 April 2021].
OCAPhotography 