Wall Art - Geometric Studies of the photographic art of Jeff Wall
It was just over a week ago that I was set the task of watching this video of an interview with Jeff Wall…
I have liked Wall's work since being introduced to it early on in this MA and what intrigues me most about it is that whilst none of his images are snapshots...
“A picture taken quickly without any preparation, without any organisation. Without any collaboration”
..they do, in his words, “contemplate it”. They relate to the possibility of an unplanned captured instance in time.
His images range from being staged with characters acting in a real environment, to the recreation of an environment within which to place actors, and in some images, he goes a step further still and indulges in some heavy compositing in order to create the scene he wants to depict. Yet despite the broad range of of possible technical constructs Wall might use, there is a consistency to the look of his output so that, with any image, you can only take it at face value for what it depicts as it is never entirely clear how it s depiction came to be.
His reason for creating images in a considered way comes, he says, from the enjoyment of the creative process, or working on an image and seeing the idea change, the concept change and become more than what may have been envisaged at the outset. A pleasure he doesn't get from the capture of spontaneous images.
In this interview Wall talks about liking the appearance of things; of getting enjoyment from seeing.
(Wall, 2002)
“Concrete Ball”, pictured above, is one image he discusses at some length.
“It was a place and arrangement of shapes and forms that I felt, from this particular point where the camera is, that became a composition that had in it the kind of qualities I think a picture should have.”
I assume Wall had walked along that path many times and with his 'photographer’s eye' had been captivated by the oddity of this ball, raised aloft and set in an environment that was otherwise so rectilinear. It is not an image of his that I had previously been taken by. I hadn't, until he pointed it out, seen what he had seen.
This viewpoint reminded me of the video of Viviane Sassen describing the display, in an interview with The Photographers' Gallery, of her fashion work in a gallery context.
“I find it quite problematic to find the right way to show my fashion pictures within the realm of the museum.... In most fashion photography you feel that it is all set up and of course you do feel that in my work as well but I am not that interested in the narrative in that sense.
I am much more looking for shapes and structures and colours, and graphicness and creating kind of sculptures.”
In Sassen’s interview, we find another photographer coming at the practice from a very different place to Wall and yet there is a meeting point, an intersection of interest.
Watching this interview got me thinking about letting go, to some extent, of maybe abandoning a need to always try to create a deep narrative. That there is a joy to be found in the creation if images that are interesting at an aesthetic level only. Duchamp may describe this type of work as just being "retinal art", intended only to please the eye but I wonder if at the very least geometry can be a starting point for the creation of an image rather than a by-product of it.
Returning to Wall's work, and Concrete Ball in particular, once seen the geometric strength of the image cannot be unseen, it is quite striking.
Inspired slightly by the plagiaristic work of Richard Prince who rephotographed advertising images and recycled them as “art”, I wondered if other aspects of a photograph could be 'taken'. Could a photograph such as Concrete Ball be distilled down to just its geometry, and if so what of the geometry was key to the image and what was secondary? How much can be removed and yet the image still be recognisable or at the very least interesting? Could I make “art” from the geometry of another photographer’s photo?
So sitting in the car park of a hospital I started to sketch over the top of 'Concrete Ball' to expose the geometry.
‘Wall Art #1’, Cranefield, 2021)
In making this sketch, I found it really interesting to contemplate what shapes were relevant and to consider what may have struck Wall when he first viewed the scene. I didn't feel it necessary, for example, to include the plinth that the ball sits on. Its purpose, to my mind, is simply to place the ball in its position but it does not add to the drama of the composition.
Intrigued by this quick study I went back to a few of Jeff Wall's other images, ones that I am more familiar with to go through the same exercise and how much of a part geometric shapes play within them, starting with one of my favourites 'Boy Falls From Tree'.
In some images, basic geometry plays a large part in the impact of an image. Wall often achieves a balance in the weight of shapes across the image and breaks in geometry, such as the line of the top of the wall in 'Volunteer' that occurs above the subject’s head…
Geometric study of ‘Volunteer’
…which adds to the dark doorway behind the subject. In the original, it is the door that is most obvious yet with most detail stripped away the disconnect in that line jars and makes room for the subject underneath. It is as if the subject pierces the line, and creates the space.
In many images, movement comes not only from the actors but also from the acute perspective and dynamic angles that come from a vanishing point close to the edge of the image.
This sketching process has caused me to look beyond the simplistic compositional "rules" that it is easy for a photographer to fall into the trap of using: Rules of thirds, rule of odds etc. Instead, there is possibly a more interesting approach in considering how the shapes within the image play or relate to one another at a more complex level. Orientations can create movement or stillness and shapes can be pulled into the foreground by their contrast to everything else in the image. Not through colour or position but simply through geometry.
Much like a concrete ball hovering amidst a field of lines.
References
Cranefield, R. (2021a). Wall Art #1.
Cranefield, R. (2021b). Wall Art #2.
Cranefield, R. (2021c). Wall Art #3.
Cranefield, R. (2021d). Wall Art #4.
Cranefield, R. (2021e). Wall Art #5.
Cranefield, R. (2021f). Wall Art #6.
Cranefield, R. (2021g). Wall Art #7.
Viviane Sassen (2014). An interview with Viviane Sassen. The Photographers’ Gallery. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeCrUnEUtk0 [Accessed 12 Nov. 2020].
Wall, J. (1996). Volunteer.
Wall, J. (2002). Concrete Ball. https://www.mariangoodman.com/exhibitions/337/works/artworks19705/.
Wall, J. (2015). Jeff Wall Interview: Pictures Like Poems. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkVSEVlqYUw&t=9s [Accessed 17 Apr. 2021].
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Marcel Duchamp. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp.
(This blog entry was written as part of my Master’s Degree in Photography and forms part of an academically assessed work.)