Widely considered one of the most influential artists working today, Wall is known for the diverse range of his approach to picture making, from large-scale photographs in colour and black-and-white often made in collaboration with the people who appear in them, to works on a more modest scale achieved with little or no intervention by the artist.
A Sudden Gust Of Wind (after Hokusia) 1993
Silver dye bleach transparency (Cibachrome); aluminum light box
90 3/16 * 148 7/16" (229 * 377 CM)
When i was making A Sudden Gust Of Wind i knew i wanted to show how the air would carry the papers. Hokusai had already solved some of those problems. If you analyze his composition, you realize that many of the little pieces of paper coincided with very important points on the rectangle. He composed something that had to feel of the accident. It was not accidental, but he knew how to make it look that way. I thought that the only way to achieve that was at first create chance situations, to create a lot of movement and then just have a lot of material to edit. so we created a way a lot of paper could be moved in the air and then tried to think of both the rectangle and the invisible air current in three dimensions. As the papers move in depth, they move away from us and get smaller. I just worked hard on it and tried to compose. There is no guide, its just a feeling, a sense of the real, how things really are or would be.
"Interview Jeff Wall" Published in German in Revolver (03/2004)
“A Sudden Gust of Wind” is based on a famous Hokusai print in which several travelers are buffeted by unexpected turbulence that sends the sheets of a manuscript spiraling through the air. He used more than a hundred shots in the painstaking composition of the final 12-foot-long picture.
As opposed to the Manet case, the Wall image is great if seen in isolation. You may still ask yourself what is the purpose of mimicking (copying? plagiarizing?) another image? In this case, the two pictures are closely related – both are lovely. Looking at them close together is confusing.
(taken from KGL photo Blog)
Milk. 1984
6ft 2 1/2 in * 7ft 6 1/4 in.
I love this image it looks so real and is really detailed when you look close.
Most of Jeffs Walls work in shown in galleries.
Jeff Wall uses state-of-the art photographic and computer technology to create images that share the composition, scale and ambitions of the grandest historical paintings. His works often have the formality of documentary photography. He exclusively stages his
scenes, sometimes reproducing or interpreting paintings or specific events.
He views himself as part painter, part movie director and part photographer, all three being part, in his opinion, of a single pictorial tradition. Some images are shot on location, others in his studio. The process may include paid actors and consultants such as
marine biologists, stage builders and Hollywood special effects experts.
His images are very large even considering his frequent use of large format cameras and medium format Hasselblads – often in the order of 6 feet by 6 feet or 2*2 meters. Some measure 10 feet by 16 feet. The people in the images are often life-size. He can combine hundreds of images into one. The images may be prints (traditional or inkjet) or transparencies mounted in light boxes.
