Jeff Wall in the New York Times
“Men Waiting,” with its cast of 20, its two-week shoot and its on-the-street location, is a small-scale Wall production. Not long before, the artist devoted a full year to “In front of a nightclub” — a picture of young people standing outside a Vancouver club at night. The shoot took so long because the club Wall found, on a heavily trafficked thoroughfare, could not be photographed as he wished. There was no place for him to stand with his tripod and large-format camera. So he had the club exterior — the columns and grille-work of the facade, the gum-spotted sidewalk, the concrete curb — reconstructed in a studio. One assistant worked for six months dressing the set. “Of course, you can’t see everything he did, but that doesn’t matter,” Wall says. “There is dirt and moss growing in the cracks where the bottom of the building is crumbling, but you can’t see it. The discoloration of the sidewalk is extremely accurate, and it took many layers of application. My son and his friends came and chewed gum. That was their job for two weeks.” He placed his strobes in the precise locations occupied by the street lamps and other lights that shine opposite the real nightclub. Concealed in a van with blacked-out windows, he and his assistants parked outside the actual club on several nights and, using a telephoto lens, took 300 or 400 snapshots of the kids gathered there. Wall scrutinized the photos for characters and clusterings he liked, then he hired 40 extras from a casting agency. Dividing them into two groups and giving them general directions, he photographed them over the course of a month on alternate nights. (“People’s metabolism is different at night, their coloring is different,” he explains.) For each group he finished with only one frame that satisfied him. “You only need one,” he points out. Using digital technology, he combined the two photos of the crowd with a third one of the building into his final picture.
Man, I just don’t get it. I’ve been trying to figure out what the big deal about Jeff Wall is since 1996. (I know what the books tell me—he was a pioneer of the postmodern cinematic photo tableaux; his use of scale and presentation was groundbreaking; he works harder on each image than just about any other photographer in the world.) But all I can think is, “He spent a full year working on this picture? It’s so… boring!” But I keep looking at his work and reading about him, wondering if his photographs will someday reveal themselves to me. Wall’s career got a big old shot in the arm from the New York Times yesterday.
Larry wrote:
Yeah, I read that article last night. I was stuck at the airport in DC and had time to really get into it. It really strikes me as “diligent art”. In a lot of ways I find the art public to require that artists have nearly impossible to attain skills, be insane, or posess a totally out of the ordinary work ethic. People love this kind of work because they don’t feel like the artist is “getting away with something”. And what better way to prove a piece’s worth than a laundry list of superlative facts, as opposed to almost totally intangible, nearly indescribable sensations that can only be experienced in person. This is water cooler art.
Posted on 26-Feb-07 at 8:56 am | Permalink
Chris wrote:
I agree with what Larry says, I think the growing vogue for working with Large Format cameras has something to do with the artist trying to seperate themselves from what is an easily accesable and democratic art form.
Posted on 28-Feb-07 at 6:12 am | Permalink
Mike wrote:
I think the superlatives and emphasis on the execution is more sympomatic of deficiencies in the writers (and their audience) than in Wall’s work. The meticulousness of his process and the fidelity it allows are clearly important, but they are not the most interesting aspect of the work by any means.
Posted on 07-Mar-07 at 2:30 am | Permalink
glori b wrote:
this photograph isnt boring at all-WHAT SO-ever. You people obviously aren’t seeing lighting and aren’t looking at the peoples face, movements, ect. He is trying to re-create what he thinks(not really thinks since he took so long to take it) is goes on in front of a nightclub. Look at the people, try to put yourself in there shoes..you’ll see things differently.
Posted on 07-Mar-07 at 11:10 pm | Permalink
FromBklyn wrote:
Looking at his work on your computer or in the paper and trying to get a grip on it is dumb. He didn’t make it for you to see it like that.
Go to a museum or gallery where the pieces are actually showing. Look at them. They rock, and that’s all there is to it.
He has a piece in homage to _Invisible Man_ (James Ellison’s novel) that is pretty fucking perfect.
Gotta see it live: He makes iconography, and if you can’t see it as such, maybe you should reflect for a moment about why.
Posted on 26-Mar-07 at 1:39 am | Permalink
Chris wrote:
Looks like the Stone Temple in Vancouver.
Posted on 27-Mar-07 at 1:43 am | Permalink
Michael O'Reilly wrote:
Went to see the Jeff Wall exhibition at MOMA New York this week.
They are extraordinary pictures, no computer or printed page can do justice to them , you must see them in situ and be gobsmacked!
Posted on 26-Apr-07 at 9:34 am | Permalink
J Pfister wrote:
I just saw a Jeff Wall exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute, and you would really need to see these pics lifesize and backlit to understand their power…
Posted on 26-Aug-07 at 6:58 pm | Permalink