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 PHOTOGRAPHY & PRINT THE FAIR

In a society hooked on immediate gratification, it’s sometimes difficult to imagine we’re all on our own individual timelines. And no that’s not a reference to social media, it’s a reference to the way we view modern art.

Today’s culture of ever-renewed digital imagery makes for poor attention spans, and all that’s required from us and our iPhones, is to glance (and then forget) from a sedentary position. Jeff Wall, the champion of slow looking art, is a refreshing segway from the din of modern technology. His work requires study and prolonged meditation, and viewing his oeuvre proves nearly impossible to distill into one common thread.

Often comprised of fewer images in the collections and exhibitions, those who experience Jeff Wall’s photographs are actively decelerated upon viewing. Such a range of subject matter forces a crystallisation of attention — often his large scale digital montages require minute observation to digest meaning. Wall has said of his work that he aims to provoke an unshackling of political and personal bias; viewers are urged to openly consider the other possibilities within the narrative.

Perhaps best known for his suspense-filled constructions of ordinary life, Jeff Wall’s works are always rich and exquisite with cultural reference. He has delved into classical reportage photography to elaborate constructions and montages — constructions in the sense of formulating around the fleeting moment, something reportage by nature cannot do. Wall distills the essentials of photography and embraces other art forms of literature, painting, and cinema. He calls this mode of working “cinematography”.

Born 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he still resides, he became involved in photography in the 1960s — the palmy days of conceptual art — and from the 1970s onwards his motivations were progressive. Wall pursued the spirit of conceptualism and thus furthered his own brand of pictorial photography.

Initially his pictures were made as backlit colour transparencies, a medium synonymous with publicity and the media, rather than photographic art. These works revolutionised the relationship the public had with colour photography, cementing it as an important aspect of aesthetics in photography.

A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) is a large colour photograph displayed in a light box. The landscape, flat and open, depicts foreground figures frozen at the mercy of a blustery wind. The work is inspired and built around a woodcut named Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri (c. 1832) from a revered portfolio, The Thirty-six Views of Fuji, by Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).

Another seminal photograph by Jeff Wall is his grotesque fiction, or ‘hallucination’ of wounded soldiers in Afghanistan. The troops are Soviet patrol soldiers who were ambushed during the occupation of the 1980s. Titled Dead Troops Talk, the soldiers are suddenly reanimated and brought back from the dead. The image mixes pathos with black humour — a desert vision of orchestrated horror and fantasy. The artist refers to this piece as “a dialogue of the dead”. When scanning the image, each figure or group appear to respond differently; some, in agony, others clowning around with their wounds — an invocation of the macabre.