Photography: Jeff wall

1. Jeff Wall

2. Jeff Wall – Background
(Professional career)
 Born – September 29th 1946 – Present day in Vancouver, Canada.
 Jeff Wall still lives and works in his home town Vancouver, he has work
displayed in London, Berlin, Dublin, Sweden, Norway, San Francisco, New
York and Chicago.
 His photographs are transparencies which are lit from behind with a light box;
he got this idea after seeing an illuminated advertisement from a bus window,
during a trip between Spain and London.
 He refers to his photographs as “prose poems” and claims they should be
experienced – they are not simply images that document.
 Wall experimented with conceptual art while an undergraduate student at UBC.
Wall then made no art until 1977, when he produced his first backlit photo-
transparencies.

3. Achievements
 Wall received an MA from the university of British Columbia in 1970.
 In 2002 he was awarded The Hasselblad Award, this is an
international award for photography, the prize is £500,000, a gold
medal and a diploma.
 In 2006 he was made A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; by
2007 he was an officer of the order of Canada. This is awarded on the
behalf of The Queen; it recognises the “achievements of outstanding
merit through life long contributions”.
 In 2008 Wall was awarded the Avdain Prize for “life long
achievement”.

4. Interesting Facts
 His photographic tableaux often take Vancouver's mixture of natural beauty,
urban decay and postmodern and industrial featurelessness as their backdrop.
 The cover image of Iggy Pops 1999 album, Avenue B, is a portrait photograph of
Iggy by Jeff Wall.
 Wall distinguishes between un-staged "documentary" pictures and his
"cinematographic" pictures, produced using a combination of actors, sets, and
special effects, such as Overpass, 2001.
 Since the 1990’s, Wall has made large scale black and white photographs as
well as smaller colour images.

6. After ‘invisible man’ (Ralph Ellison) - Jeff
Wall
One of the most interesting points about this photograph is the composition and the
use of the light bulbs on mass. It makes the shot look quite claustrophobic because of
the lack of natural light and neutral colour palette. This gives the impression that the
mood is quite solemn and thoughtful. The light bulbs also create a juxtaposition as
they provide light for the subject, however the image is fairly dark. The subject falls on
a golden section and therefore he is made a focal point.

7. Bibliography.
 www.whitecube.com
 www.tate.org.uk
 www.wikipedia.com
 www.river66.files.wordpress.com
 www.lse.ac.uk
 www.geoffmartin.files.wordpress.com
 www.4.bp.blogspot.com
 www.medienkunstnetz.de
 www.images.artnet.com
 www.thefirstpost.co.uk
 www.ago.net