About
I begin by not photographing.
—Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall’s work synthesizes the essentials of photography with elements from other art forms—including painting, cinema, and literature—in a complex mode that he calls “cinematography.” His pictures range from classical reportage to elaborate constructions and montages, usually produced at the larger scale traditionally identified with painting.
Wall was born in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he still lives. He became involved with photography in the 1960s—the heyday of Conceptual art—and by the mid-1970s he had extended Conceptualism’s spirit of experimentation into his new version of pictorial photography. His pictures were made as backlit color transparencies, a medium identified at the time with publicity rather than photographic art. These works had a startling effect when exhibited in galleries and museums, playing a part in the establishment of color as an important aspect of the aesthetics of photography.
Some of Wall’s early pictures evoke the history of image making by overtly referring to other artworks: The Destroyed Room (1978) explores themes of violence and eroticism inspired by Eugène Delacroix’s monumental painting The Death of Sardanapalus (1827), while Picture for Women (1979) recalls Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) and brings the implications of that famous painting into the context of the cultural politics of the late 1970s. These two pictures are models of a thread in Wall’s work that the artist calls “blatant artifice”: pictures that foreground the theatricality of both their subject and their production. Dead Troops Talk (1991–92), a large image depicting a hallucinatory moment from the Soviet war in Afghanistan, is a central example, and was one of the first works to employ digital-imaging technology, which has since transformed the landscape of photography. Wall was a pioneer in exploring this dimension and remains at the forefront of its development.
A second key direction in Wall’s work is what he calls the “near documentary.” These are pictures that resemble documentary photographs in style and manner but are made in collaboration with the people who appear in them. Wall works mostly with nonprofessional models in a way that recalls the neorealism of the Italian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, creating images of everyday moments charged with complex meanings. By depicting incidents that he witnesses but does not attempt to photograph in the moment, he opens up formal and dramatic possibilities for pictures that, he has said, “contemplate the effects and meanings of documentary photographs.”
Since the mid-1990s Wall has expanded his repertoire, working with traditional black-and-white prints and, more recently, inkjet color prints.
Photo: James O’Mara
#JeffWall
Exhibitions
Jeff Wall: An Exhibition Tour
Join Jeff Wall as he leads a tour through his latest exhibition in Beverly Hills. The artist speaks about the genesis and creation of each photograph, addressing the aesthetic decisions involved.
In Conversation
Jeff Wall and Gary Dufour
Jeff Wall speaks to Gary Dufour about his new photographs, made on the beachfront of English Bay in Vancouver, Canada, that record the endlessly varied and shifting patterns created in seaweed by the ebb and flow of the tide.
Death Valley ’89: Jeff Wall vs. Photography
Daniel Spaulding considers formal and technical developments in the photographer’s work against the background of global shifts of power and politics, specifically the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Laws of Motion
Catalyzed by Laws of Motion—a group exhibition pairing artworks from the 1980s on by Jeff Koons, Cady Noland, Rosemarie Trockel, and Jeff Wall with contemporary sculptures by Josh Kline and Anicka Yi—Wyatt Allgeier discusses the convergences and divergences in these artists’ practices with an eye to the economic worlds from which they spring.
Jeff Wall: The Space of Photography
Jeff Wall leads a tour through his most recent exhibition in New York.
Now available
Gagosien Quarterly Summer 2019
The Summer 2019 issue of Gagosien Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Afrylic by Ellen Gallagher on its cover.
Jeff Wall: The World as It Appears
The artist speaks with David Rimanelli about his newest works, the physicality of photography, and the persistence of certain motifs throughout his career.
Unreal Americans
Benjamin Nugent reflects on questions of verisimilitude and American life in the group exhibition I Don’t Like Fiction, I Like History at Gagosien, Beverly Hills.
In Conversation
Andreas Gursky and Jeff Wall
On the occasion of a major survey of Andreas Gursky’s work at the Hayward Gallery in London, Gursky and Jeff Wall discuss the state of photography and the evolution of the medium.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Artist Talk
Summer Series
Jeff Wall
Thursday, July 28, 2022, 12:30pm MST
Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado
andersonranch.org
As part of Anderson Ranch Arts Center’s Summer Series program, Jeff Wall will speak about his practice, which synthesizes the essentials of photography with elements from other art forms—including painting, cinema, and literature—in a complex mode that he calls “cinematography.” Summer Series: Featured Artists and Conversations explores the work of artists and curators through lectures, conversations, panel discussions, and question-and-answer sessions, with the aim of fostering a broader understanding of contemporary art and art making.
Jeff Wall, Event, 2021 © Jeff Wall
In Conversation
ICP Talks
Jeff Wall and David Campany
Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 6pm EST
As part of ICP Talks, an online lecture series organized by the International Center of Photography in New York, Jeff Wall will be joined by David Campany, ICP’s managing director of programs, in a discussion about the artist’s practice. Wall will consider how his interest in scale and the beholder in the exhibition space shape his image making as he moves between documentary and more cinematographic pictures. To join the event, purchase tickets at buy.acmeticketing.com.
Jeff Wall, Approach, 2014 © Jeff Wall
Art Fair
FIAC Online 2021
Printemps oublié
March 2–12, 2021
Gagosien is pleased to present Printemps oublié for the first online edition of FIAC. This curated presentation reflects the dual character of springtime as a reminder of past trials and the harbinger of a vibrant new season to come.
All the artworks will appear on the Gagosien website and a rotating selection will appear in the inaugural FIAC Online Viewing Rooms, from March 4 to 7.
Jeff Koons, Bluebird Planter, 2010–16 © Jeff Koons
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Capturing the Moment
Through January 28, 2024
Tate Modern, London
www.tate.org.uk
Capturing the Moment explores the relationship between photography and painting through iconic artworks from the modern era. The exhibition examines how the two distinct mediums have shaped each other and how artists have blurred the boundaries to capture moments in time. Work by Francis Bacon, Georg Baselitz, John Currin, Andreas Gursky, Pablo Picasso, Jeff Wall, and Andy Warhol is included.
Jeff Wall, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993, Tate Modern, London © Jeff Wall
Closed
Reframed
The Woman in the Window
May 4–September 4, 2022
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
Reframed: The Woman in the Window brings together more than fifty artworks from ancient civilizations to the present day to explore how artists have long used the motif of “the woman in the window” to elicit a particular kind of response, ranging from empathy to voyeurism. Featuring sculpture, painting, printmaking, photography, film, and installation art, the exhibition aims to identify key geographic locations, cultures, and time periods in which this visual trope has had a particular meaning and what it reveals about issues of gender and visibility. Work by Jeff Wall and Rachel Whiteread is included.
Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (For WHP), 2015 © Rachel Whiteread. Photo: Lucy Dawkins
Closed
True Pictures?
Zeitgenössische Fotografie aus Kanada und den USA
March 12–June 26, 2022
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria
www.museumdermoderne.at
This group exhibition, whose subtitle translates to Contemporary Photography from Canada and the USA, presents work by more than thirty North American artists spanning three generations whose photography is informed by our digital age—both through their employment of digital technologies and in terms of their engagement with the “flood of images” that defines visual culture of the twenty-first century. This exhibition has traveled from the Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany. Work by Gregory Crewdson, Taryn Simon, and Jeff Wall is included.
Taryn Simon, Ronald Jones; Scene of the arrest, South Side, Chicago, Illinois; Served 8 years of a Death sentence for Murder and Rape, from the series The Innocents, 2002 © Taryn Simon
Closed
Jeff Wall in
Actual Size! Photography at Life Scale
January 28–May 2, 2022
International Center of Photography, New York
www.icp.org
In 1946, the renowned writer Jorge Luis Borges described a society that wanted a map of its land so detailed that it eventually covered the land itself. Actual Size! is an homage to Borges’s wild but serious idea, showing us new ways to consider what a photograph is, and what it can be. The exhibition, which offers viewers a diverse group of images that all share the same dimension as life itself, is a rethinking of the fundamental qualities of this perplexing and elastic medium. Work by Jeff Wall is included.
Jeff Wall, Approach, 2014 © Jeff Wall
Press
Jeff Wall Takes Photography Into a Painterly Realm by Karen Rosenberg
New York Times
May 15, 2019
Online
PDF
Garry Winogrand and Jeff Wall: Photography in Two Phases by Peter Schjeldahl
New Yorker
May 13, 2019
Online
PDF