Trained as an art historian, Jeff Wall has been working for over 25 years on his expansive light boxes of staged scenes. These backlit photographic transparencies are set in cases generally associated with advertising display; but, instead of advertisements, Wall fills them with moments of everyday life that usually go unacknowledged: workers restoring a historic building, a janitor mopping a floor, a kitchen flooded with sunlight, the side of a house in the prairies. Carefully staged and meticulously composed, often over and over again until the perfect image has been achieved, Wall's images have explored a wide range of social and political themes, including urban violence, racism, poverty, gender and class conflicts, history, memory, and representation. Like the great French realist painters of the 19th century, Wall is, in the words of Charles Baudelaire, "a painter of modern life."
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Jeff Wall was born in 1946 in Vancouver, where he still lives and works. Though he has practiced photography since the 60s, his work has been most widely exhibited in the last two decades. Solo shows have been mounted in Frankfurt, Montreal, Basel, Los Angeles, London and Washington, D.C. The subject of many monographs, he is also the author of numerous critical texts.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Beautiful yet Too Short Opus,
By Martin Wasserman (Milwaukee, Wisconsin United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Jeff Wall: Photographs (Hardcover)
While living in New York City for the first semsester of my junior year in art school, I was assigned to take a look at a gallery exhibition of Jeff Wall. I had never heard of him before, and when I saw the huge Duratrans pieces, I was floored. I instantly loved Wall's aesthetic and historical sensibilities. I ordered this book over the other two available because it was the most recently published. The essays are wonderfully insightful, and I'm glad they were included. I have only one complaint about this otherwise marvelous book-- there are less than 40 plates altogether. Of course I knew this when I bought it, but Wall's work is of the kind where one simply wants to see more. By far my favorite plates are the ones that could be categorized as "near-documentary". They are seemingly real, spontaneous compositions-- yet when one does a double-take, it's obvious that it was set up entirely. Jeff Wall is alone in his mastery of this genre. Obviously, the length of the book isn't something that I should take any stars off of. So it gets a 5-star rating. I suppose I'll have to purchase another Wall book now!
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
jeff wall, the man behind the picture,
This review is from: Jeff Wall: Photographs (Hardcover)
wow, a fantastic book, all the information one needs...
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
