the sensual possibilities of vision, Photographer- Jeff Wall.

It was harder than I thought to pick the second photographer who opens to me the possibilities of the inner counter part of vision. A talk by the Jeff wall can be found at the Tate Modern link
(free to watch)
http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/jeff_wall/

I was looking at the last two portfolios of photos I took at the end of last semester. In one set the model was completely compliant. He was an old friend and happy to be and do as I asked. The second set was of his ex; she did not want to be photographed by me, though she had initially agreed. In the first set I could see that each shot expressed my 'seeing 'of him. In the second set, of her, I was a mere mechanical photographer. There was little if anything artistic at play since she was not open to being directed and the shoot did not flow. In ‘re-looking’ I was struck by how empty and lacking in myself the photos of her were.

Yet objectively these photos were a likeness of her. Seeing is a multi-layer and the flatness of her photos are almost alien as if sight/seeing does not operate this way. There was no truth in her photos. It’s possible I would not have noticed as strongly had there not been such a sharp aesthetic contrast between the two.


Jeff wall interests me because he speaks like a philosopher-photographer and expresses within his practice, in addition to all the regular artistic concerns, a mode of enquiry into seeing. After Len Jenshel the first photographer I looked at, here is Jeff Wall talking about his black and white and monochrome pictures also being about the renunciation of colour and how that opened certain directions to him. The possibilities of practice within what seems to be restricted parameters. A bit like any single incarnation where one is not expected to be all things.