Photographer Jeff Wall makes large-scale color images that seem to capture people engaged in everyday life, but are in fact largely staged. “I wanted to exaggerate the artificial aspect of my work as a way to create a distance from the dominant context of reportage, the legacy of Robert Frank and the others,” Wall explains. “I saw something else in photography, something to do with scale, with color and with construction, which might be valid along with the more established values that had come down from the 19th century and had been extended by the great photographers of the 20th century.” Wall’s practice is varied, and for many years has also incorporated smaller, documentary photographs and, since 1997, black-and-white pictures.
|
Wall has sometimes referred to his photographs as ‘near documentaries’ because they frequently come from scenes he has witnessed in passing and recomposed later. Recently, he has more actively explored the literary and filmic aspects of his art. The majority of his pieces are set in Vancouver and contain references to art, the media, and socio-economic problems.