Jeff Wall at the Tate Modern 25/10/2005

The Starr Auditorium 6:30pm
A journalist conveys the event, an artist conveys the representation of the event.
A photograph is a result of:
1. A space opening up for making this kind of image and allowing the photographer to investigate the moment.
2. Photography is one still image in the series of images that make up cinematography.
3. Black and White photography is the option of the photographer to denounce colour.
4. The ‘Digital’ frees or releases the image from the piece of film

In Photography, the subject is always there [present]
Wall’s work consists of carefully staged set pieces that sometimes reflect or are based on paintings e.g.
The Destroyed Room (1978) references Delacroix’s ‘The Death of Sardanapalus (1827),

‘Picture for Women’, (1979) references Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergeres (1881-2),
The Storyteller (1968) references ‘Dejeuner sur l’herbe’, (1863)

‘A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993) references Katsushika Hokusai’s ‘Ejiri in Suruga Province’, (1830-33)

He also bases work on literature: e.g.
Odradek, Taboritska 8, Prague, 18 July 1944 references Franz Kafka’s Short Story, “TheCares of a Family Man (1919)
After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (1999-2000) references Ralph Ellison’s novel “Invisible Man”

In these set pieces he pays a great deal of attention to detail and resents criticism of his obsession with this detail. ‘When is there one detail too many?’
Does his obsession with minutia prevent him from seeing the ‘bigger’ picture? [or does it make the ‘bigger’ picture less important?] Of course, Wall does have the option to return to a ‘mannerist’, forced, distorted way of making images.
He makes video to aid his staging of the ‘subject’, but would not consider showing these videos.
Art in galleries should be static.
Movement is an illusion in art. Art presents the illusion of movement. Cinematography is something else. It is not narrational.
Photography is a way of revealing the world using chemistry…e.g. the luminescence of paper in a good photograph.
Wall has an aversion to the fixed but is not prescriptive in his choices. He waits for the ‘moment’ to allow him to ‘reveal’ the ‘subject’ of the photograph. [could be a theme, object, mood, notion etc.]
The ‘subject’ is a reason to make a picture.
On viewing a photograph: “You get the feeling of having a cognitive experience without cognition taking place.”
The photograph lifts the burden of cognition.
He studied Art History at the Courtauld as he was ‘too anarchic’ to become a student at an art school. He knew he wanted to do something with representation but wasn’t sure what? He did painting when he had a studio.