- For abonnenter
In Jeff Wall's photographs, it's all about the details - but are they important?
When you see one of Jeff Wall's large-format photographs reproduced in a book or newspaper, detail is lost. That's inevitable. But something else is lost, too: the irony or wry, gothic humor, the self-subverting postmodern wink. That loss underscores how essential scale is to Wall's work, and how his images function in two distinct modes - one multifaceted and complex, the other direct, journalistic and often shocking.
If you have a chance to look through the catalogue before visiting the Jeff Wall exhibition at Glenstone in Potomac, Md. - the largest U.S. survey of his career in almost 15 years - compare your first impression with the photographs as they were meant to be seen, often reproduced as transparencies illuminated from behind and spanning nine