Jeff Wall and Cibachrome Photography | Essay

Running Head: Jeff Wall and Cibachrome Photography
Jeff Wall and Cibachrome Photography
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1JEFF WALL AND CIBACHROME PHOTOGRAPHY
JEFF WALL AND CIBACHROME PHOTOGRAPHY
Jeffrey Wall, or better known as Jeff Wall, is among the modern artists of Canada and
one of the few among the artists to introduce postmodern philosophy in their work of art. Jeff
has been involved in artwork since his undergraduate days at the University of British
Columbia (UBC), after which he stopped making art and joined Courtauld Institute to
complete his postgraduate. He studied Edouard Manet under Clark, which reflects in his later
work showing postmodern life using everyday material things to depict his impressions. The
paper will trace the evolution and change in the learning process and the social actors who
were responsible for Wall’s rise to prominence.
In London, he served under many universities as associate professor and lecturer. The
reason for his break from art was revealed by him in one of his interviews to be reassessing
and evaluating his approach towards following the deviation in the avant-garde movement
and adhering to the neo avant-garde techniques (Conley, 2019). His assessment of himself
was that of dissatisfaction, and he stayed in the teaching profession. It made him learn about
the same techniques, which helped him learn about it more, and he considers it to be one of
the pivotal moments in his life, which made him realize the difference in the creation he
could produce.
Jeff rose to prominence due to his take on photography as a medium to engage in his
art with the help of backlit phototransparencies when he returned with his work in the year
1977 (Ackerley, 2014). These works were taken as renunciation from the norms of depicting
painting in the form of conventional display and showed the representation of the social
issues. His pictures tend to share a similar trait, but he denies the fact that he makes any of
them as a continuation of the first. They show affinity towards novels and writings for their
depiction of an image in the form of a detailed analysis of picture and the thought process of
an artist’s mind rather than a depiction of a memory. His photography blended the general

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flow of narrative in the works of impressionist writings as well as to artists such as Franz
Kafka and Edouard Manet.
During the period of the 1960’s the artists’ front was reeling with the continuation of
the Avant-Garde movement of impressionism and Dadaism and Jeff due to his academic life
falling in this period ended up reading and learning about them but was later on unsatisfied
with his conventional following of the norms. When the artists and his contemporaries were
falling for the contemporary inventions in the printers and following the norm of deviation,
he went back to the adoption of the backlit transphotography, which was adhering to the
convention. It showed his negation of following the convention of modernism by violating
the Avant-Garde method and working on the landscape of Vancouver in his early works to
show his impression of the social art of theatre and literature (Modigliani, 2010). His utility
of the Cibachrome photographs with the use of backlit boxes, which were primarily used in
billboards and the organization of his exhibitions as shows, reflects the narrative form his
pictography showed.
Jeff was considerably affected by the post-medium effect generated from the relation
of Greenberg and Adorno, who showed the effect of deviation of modernism from the
convention and the adherence to the postmodern technological advancement. Adorno’s
writings suggest that modernism, as the aesthetic form, was never an independent entity
rather largely depended on the mass culture, which was the product of the technological use
in photography. However, his writings also showed the inherent culture which was present in
the modern photographic front was the amalgamation of the effort to include the impact of
the destruction of the war and later the holocaust (Wall, 2012). The discourse showed the rise
and disintegration of the formalist art form and the artists looking to experiment with their art
outside the formal lesion, which was the re-emergence of the convention of deviation from

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the conventional form of painting. It was brought to life with the use of performances,
installations as in the case of Jeff and the use of concept and text in their works.
Jeff was a significant part of the aesthetic culture that dealt with the post-medium
effect and can be seen in his work when he returned after his break from art and projected his
work in the form of installation. He was primarily influenced by Ian Wallace and his
description of photoconceptual art, which he recognized as the combination of the fading
modernist ideas and the exposure of the modern city to the work of the artist. He was mainly
a part of the photo-conceptualization as it is vividly seen from the separation, which was
witnessed due to the culmination of photography with conceptual art as being restricted in
terms of drawing its power from the regional art (Thorsen & Blok, 2016).
Photoconceptualism, in its formative state, was influenced by its use in making portfolios in
which it found its use as an investigative tool. Later on, it became a state which was used as a
mirroring technique to depict the everyday realities with the collaboration of photography.
During this period of formulation of the concept, Vancouver saw two art exhibitions
in 1969 and 1970 in the Vancouver Art Gallery and opened new avenues and mediums for
the writer who was bounded by the conventional subject as well as medium following the
Avant-Garde. Jeff contributed to this exhibition with his work, which consisted of both essay
and photographic work known as ‘Shooting a photo every time I blink as I walk the streets to
the Photo Show.’ The essay drew analysis between shooting a photograph and shooting a
gun. It was displayed in the 1969 exhibition of Chris Dikeakos, known as ‘The Photo Show’
and was one of the first in Vancouver to display photoconceptual works. In the 1970 exhibit
of Lucy Lippard, known as ‘955,000,’ which was a take on the population strength of the
city, Jeff displayed his work ‘Area Analysis’ that was based on the predetermined method of
replacement of grass divided as square patches in a landscape mode (Zhang, 2018).

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The concept of photoconceptualism found a term in the narrative of the Canadian art
due to the work of a Vancouver writer, Dennis Wheeler’s article about the ‘Four Artists’
exhibition of which Jeff’s earlier work on photoconceptualism was also included named as
the ‘Landscape Manual’ (Wall, 2012). The shift back to the landscape in the painting took the
shape of reshaping and reforming the way landscapes were captured. One of the crucial
difference which was noticed by Wheeler in the photographs was the uncertainty of the
geographic location of the image which blurred the difference between the urbane aesthetic
and modern urbanism which has come into existence due to mass culture. Wall’s work was
the first deviation from the norm of going against the convention, but he followed norms at a
time when going against the romanticism was one of the biggest adherence of the artists. His
Landscape Manual contained minute changes and precise moments of an experience which
negation of modernism. It is considered to a significant contribution of Jeff to the conceptual
art history, and it led to his recognition as a writer who changed the narrative of the
photography into one which dealt with the accuracy showing similar trait to the genre of
drama, narrative, and theatre (Luo, 2018).
Landscape Manual as a piece of work has been described as the work which reflects
the commonness and the banality of the urban location and reflects how the contrasting
difference of the landscape where the city without its monument is nothing out of the
extraordinary. It is instead meant to show with clarity the artificial sense of rationalization,
which is represented by the city and its modernized form alienation (Juarranz, 2017). His
photography emerges the clear distinction of the two kinds of wilderness, one the wilderness
of the greens are replaced by the wilderness of concrete and blocks in the city. The difference
between the two is that in the first wilderness, one can find solace and the sense of being a
part of and the later represent the replacing nature of human life. Another stark difference is

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the relevance of capitalism, as seen in the city blocks and the lack of capitalism in the
wilderness of the escape.
Another meaningful change in the Vancouver art front was the inclusion of Nathan
Lyons, an American Photographer and his use of ‘social landscape’ which harbored the
conventional formalist aim of establishing photography as a form of art which can represent
and provoke issues around social life (Newman, 2017). Wall as an artist was growing up
among these literary and location and perception challenging notions which will be seen in
his later works. The essay moves back to the Landscape Manual due to its importance and
relevance based on the openness of the Vancouver artist to different artists and
photographers, and most of the artists of the mid-twentieth century, including Jeff, has more
adhered to the praxis which is the collaboration of theories with photography. The
explanation of the atmosphere shows the foundation on which Wall’s Manual was based
(Hunter, 2018). The moving car was a break from the convention of artists retreating to their
safe place and forming arts, which were based on their creation blended with imagination and
memory to the artist remaining continuously in motion with the landscape, and the position of
the artists becomes an ever-changing variable. This mobility was symbolical for the changing
view of modernism and modernity concerning the old age norm of the view position as being
meant to stay immobile. It led to the formation of the relation between the viewer and the
landscape and the medium of mobility turning into the medium of connectivity.
It changed the way paintings were treated and helped the conversion of landscapes
into narratives and its use as texts. The significance of Manual and the photos shown in it can
be seen as the difference in the approach which Jeff took later in his life. It can be seen in the
Summer Afternoons, which has a clear and distinct image of women (nude) with the
background of the room seamlessly merging as if the body is the part of the photograph (De

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Riedmatten, 2014). The comparison shows Jeff’s later part of the work, which rose his
prominence as a significant contributor to the changing organization of the art in Canada.
In the Manual, there is no specific organization of the photographs; neither the
landscape seems to be extraordinary. The main feature of the collection is the depiction of the
featurelessness of the mundane car view, with almost all of them having some or the other
portion of the car included in them to show the exclusion of the complete view of the
particular piece. It can also be taken as the representation of the non-aesthetic nature of
landscape again, deviating from the romanticism connected with the landscape in the past.
However, in the case of his more recent work, we see him moving back to the conventional
form of photography depicting immobilization in the viewer and view changing. For
example, in his 2003 collection of ‘Summer Afternoon’ two of the picture shows similarity
with the setting and the color combination of the room and the furniture staying the same
with only the change in the women lying on the ground and the bed (Dufour, 2016). The
other stark difference is in the position of the bathroom door, which shows the action that has
taken place also symbolical of the time being passed between the two photographs. This
change in his approach again shows his deviation from following the popular culture.
In conclusion, Jeff Wall is one of the most significant figures who contributed to the
history of art in photoconceptualism. Even though at the time when artists were following the
reminiscent of the Avant-Garde and trying to make the concept of painting objective to their
understanding, he showed by adhering to the convention and making the viewer as subjective
to the understanding of the picture. His work, Picture for Women and Mimic are
representational of him being influenced by the social landscape notion and showed the
change in the attitude of the general population with the change in the modern technological
change that was a massive part of the social life.

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References
Ackerley, S. (2014). Preserving Jeff Wall: Inherent Preservation Concerns of Jeff Wall's
Early Transparencies in Light Boxes (Doctoral dissertation, Ryerson University).
Conley, C. (2019). Engendering an Avant-Garde: The Unsettled Landscapes of Vancouver
Photo-Conceptualism.
De Riedmatten, H. (2014). Narcissus in Troubled Waters: Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, Jeff
Wall. L'erma Di Bretschneider.
Dufour, G. (2016). New Acquisition: A summer to remember: Jeff Wall's Depictions of
everyday events.
Hunter, M. C. (2018). Curve, Line, Circle, Slash, Cross: A Diagram of Liquid
Intelligence. Grey Room, 6-23.
Juarranz, A. (2017). Mundane beauty in art and architecture. Ge-conservación, 1(11), 196-
201.
Luo, B. (2018, July). An Analysis of the Artistic Photography of Digital Technology
Creation. In 4th International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary
Education (ICADCE 2018). Atlantis Press.
Modigliani, L. (2010). Engendering a Counter-Tradition: Jeff Wall, Photo-conceptualism,
and the Sexual Politics of the Defeatured Landscape (Doctoral dissertation, The
Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY).
Newman, M. (2017). Odradek and the rethinking of political method in the work of art.
Thorsen, L. M., & Blok, A. (2016). Reset Latour! East Review, 35(2).
Wall, J. (2012). Once upon a time.

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Zhang, J. (2018). Photographer’s Ideas and Constructed Social Reality: Conceptual
Photography of Jeff Wall (Master's thesis).