Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the work of Jeff Wall through a recent exhibit at Greta Meert Gallery, Brussels. It will specifically focus on the possible fulfilment of ideas by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, as the possible relevancy thereof was hinted at by Michael Fried. The idea that Wall often gives us a glimpse of what the everyday looks like in a manner that renders it interesting, seems to be directly derived from Wittgenstein’s writings. Though we will evidently not argue that Wall indeed directly derived this method from these writings, we shall give a focused reading of a selection of recent works in order to research whether Wittgenstein is indeed present in Wall’s photographs, and if so, in what capacity. Similarly, Heidegger’s notion of anxiety as uncanniness of the everyday – seemingly applicable to Wall’s photographic vision – will be taken into account while analysing the photographs in the exhibit. Before we commence this focused reading of Wall’s photographs, however, we will elaborate on the different writing that has been published in regard to Jeff Wall, the everyday, uncanniness, the near-documentary, and other relevant themes for this paper, in a literature review.

Literature review

As proclaimed by Jeff Wall himself in his 1995 essay ‘Marks of Indifference’, photography as a medium cannot go beyond the practices of depiction the way other media can. It is ever burdened with the depiction of things. His answer to this possible deficit of this medium, consists of  his usage of this restriction in his favour by using this “necessary condition of being a depiction-which-constitutes-an-object”. We must note that Wall corrected his own 1995 essay in 2012 in that he does not consider this act to be (photo)conceptual any longer. Wall rejects the notion that his work is a work-that-is-not-a-work in order to be legitimate. There are however several other ways in which a photographer can use the deficiency of photography as a medium without it being purely conceptual. Wall’s approach is constituted out of several interacting practices. Instead of a conventionally sized photograph, for example, he uses large-scale Cibachromes, back-lit by fluorescent lighting. The effect of this artic means is aptly described by Tuer in a portfolio of the artist: 

“In the Lacanian sense of the gaze, one sees oneself seeing oneself looking at a photograph as if it is an old master’s painting. Like a moth to light, the eye is drawn to the luminosity, the scale, the staging, the detail.” 

The most striking and perhaps important aspect of his photographs, however, is the fact that the apparent everydayness of his pictures, is in fact a choreographed faux-document. Even though it often seems as if the photographer has taken a snapshot of the everyday, we are in fact witnesses to an elaborately set-up scene. This results in a disconcerting sense of tension between the artificial and the real. One could argue that this tension is even enhanced by the enlargement and advertisement-like glorification of banal subjects. Bell notes that this tension can only exist when the spectator can feel that something is not quite right. He argues that Wall could in fact create photographs that look like a snapshot, absolutely convincing as a matter of chance, but that he does not. After all, this would probably negate a large part of the uncanny effect his works have. It is imperative that Wall’s photographs are not documentary or even seemingly documentary, but near-documentary, as in this manner, they can succeed as a comment on the construction of vision, life, and the medium of photography.

This cinematic approach of photography by Wall, is elaborated on in multiple publications besides Bell’s thesis. Fang for example, preluding our next part of this literature review, analyses three works by Wall which illustrate his use of cinematographic contrivances (as well as his attention to art history, as he possibly refers to Manet in one of the discussed works). It is argued that these cinematographic techniques are required or at least aiding in constructing a particular gaze and in implicating the spectator in the image. While this is not entirely unconvincing, as cinematography is enormously influential in his work, Wall contradicts Fang’s thesis in a recent interview:

“It’s like rehearsing a theatre play and suddenly, through repetition, something appears that wasn’t there before. […] I don’t use any real methodologies to achieve a certain result, it just arises in an improvised way. There is only one image that works, the image that holds everything from the other images and just a little bit more. The gesture feels good because it is seemingly not there, it is alive.”

It seems that the techniques Wall uses are of a more intuitive sort than is claimed by Fang, though perhaps this is a matter of semantics. The main take-away is that Wall employs techniques, intuitively or mechanically, to create some sort of drama, theatre.

There is however yet another aspect of Wall’s photographs, and it is this aspect that is primordial to this paper: the uncanniness created by the spectator’s gaze which is constructed carefully in almost each of Wall’s photographs in which people are present. Before we proceed to analyse this aspect, we should clarify that, although Brückle makes the convincing claim that there is not that much of a difference between Wall’s documentary photographs and his cinematographic photographs, a division made by Wall himself in his catalogue raisonné from 2005, this paper will solely focus on the choreographed photographs which are occupied by people. We will address the aspect of ‘uncanniness created by the spectator’s gaze’, with the help of Conley, who analysed one of Wall’s key works in this regard: Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona (1999, fig. 1). This photograph depicts a window cleaner in the well-known German pavilion in Barcelona at dawn. The surroundings themselves are somewhat uncanny, as the pavilion exists for the sole purpose of tourism nowadays and is consequentially empty and rigid. Yet there is the window cleaner, bent over with his face averted from the spectator, engaged in what one could call a homely act. The cleaner seems to be oblivious of the womanlike statue behind the soapy windows, whose curves and roundness contrast the sharp lines and corners of the pavilion. The soapy windows grant a blurring effect in which the statue almost appears to be an animate object, creating an uncanniness in itself. But it is the window cleaner himself that draws our attention when it comes to the aspect of uncanniness. He turns himself away from this erotically charged, semi-animate woman figure, bent over his bucket to prepare for removing the soapy coat on the windows. His obliviousness to the figure, as well as his obliviousness to the gaze of the spectator, is fundamental in construing the image we perceive to be uncanny. Conley argues, however, that this is not the sole purpose of the photograph, as she refers to Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1923, fig. 2). She notices striking similarities in possible meaning between the two works of art, primarily the division of the pictorial frame, with an erotically charged, desirable female figure on the one side and a mechanically working man in a somewhat humbling position on the other side of this division. This comparison seems to be sound, given Wall’s profound knowledge of Duchamp and the almost identical subject matter, as well as Wall’s inclination to address art history in his work. It is thus evident that, although we will focus on the aspect of the gaze, we should be careful not to miss possible subject matter besides our main focus.

When we talk about the gaze, uncanniness, and if you will an ‘absorptive mode’ in the work of Jeff Wall, the quintessential article to take into account, is Jeff Wall, Wittgenstein, and the Everyday by Michael Fried. In this article, Fried discusses the similarities and differences between the different modes of absorption in late eighteenth century painting, Wall’s photographs and the likes of Gerhard Richter, while mostly focusing on Jeff Wall. While highly interesting, it would take too long to elaborately list these different modes. Fried’s analysis of the absorptive modes employed by Wall in different works, however, serve as an inspiration for this paper. Fried continues to state the importance of the commonplace, or the everyday, in Wall’s oeuvre. The everyday is after all the most approachable and understandable artistic category, while also being the richest, according to Fried. The familiarity it allows while also being surprising, makes for a recognisable experience in the spectator. This ability to be recognised while also being new, is essential in luring the spectator into what is a near-documentary picture. This near documentary mode in Wall’s pictures is best described by Fried himself as: “what the events … are like, or were like, when they passed without being photographed.” It is in this regard that Fried introduces an extract from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notebooks for 1930, which is indeed closely related to the above discussed matter:

“Engelmann told me that when he rummages round at home in a drawer full of his own manuscripts, they strike him as so glorious that he thinks they would be worth presenting to other people. (He said it’s the same when he is reading through letters from his dead relations.) But when he imagines a selection of them published he said the whole business loses its charm & value & becomes impossible I said this case was like the following one: Nothing could be more remarkable than seeing someone who thinks himself unobserved engaged in some quite simple everyday activity. Let’s imagine a theatre, the curtain goes up & and we see someone alone in his room walking up and down, lighting a cigarette, seating himself etc. so that suddenly we are observing a human being from outside in a way that ordinarily we can never observe ourselves; as if we were watching a chapter from a biography with our own eyes,–surely this would be at once uncanny and wonderful. More wonderful than anything that a playwright could cause to be acted or spoken on the stage. We should be seeing life itself.–But then we do see this every day & it makes not the slightest impression on us! True enough, but we do not see it from that point of view.–Similarly when E. looks at his writings and finds them splendid (even though he would not care to publish any of the pieces individually) he is seeing his life as God’s work of art, & and as such it is certainly worth contemplating, as is every life & everything whatever. But only the artist can represent the individual thing so that it appears to us as a work of art; those manuscripts rightly lose their value if we contemplate them singly & in any case without prejudice, i.e. without being enthusiastic about them in advance. The work of art compels us–as one might say–to see it in the right perspective, but without art the object is a piece of nature like any other & the fact that we may exalt it through our enthusiasm does not give anyone the right to display it to us. (I am always reminded of one of those insipid photographs of a piece of scenery which is interesting to the person who took it because he was there himself, experienced something, but which a third party looks at with justifiable coldness; insofar as it is ever justifiable to look at something with coldness.) But now it seems to me too that besides the work of the artist there is another through which the world may be captured sub specie æterni. It is–as I believe–the way of thought which as it were flies above the world and leaves it the way it is, contemplating it from above in its flight.”

This extract will serve as the basis for our analysis of the absorptive mode in Wall’s Greta Meert exhibit. A first notable takeaway from Wittgenstein’s writing, is that the absorbed individual is not aware of his being-seen. This notion is interesting in itself, but is granted an extra dimension when applied to the works of Wall, as the beheld individuals are only seemingly unaware. We will incorporate this in our analysis. A second point of importance, is the idea that, in this thought experiment the everyday – which is mostly evident and unappealing when you are in the everyday life – is rendered interesting because of the perspective the spectator finds himself in. This is strikingly the case in the previously discussed photograph of Jeff Wall, Morning cleaning, but it will be interesting to see in which capacity or sense this idea is applicable to his works in the Brussels exhibit. It seems that Wall’s photography – by virtue of being a photograph (lightbox, large theatrical measurements), which implies a referential, depictional character, and by virtue of displaying the apparent everyday as it would have been without the camera from the adequate perspective – realises Wittgenstein’s vision.

Fried points out that there is also a certain usefulness of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, but he does not elaborate any further on this. A further reading of Heidegger suggests the possibility of distinguishing between entities with Dasein, entities as equipment, and entities as decontextualised objects . When we think about the womanlike statue in Morning cleaning, we cannot deny this distinction is useful to analyse Jeff Wall’s work; we like to think of the statue almost as an entity with Dasein. Also, Heidegger gives a definition of anxiety as something which is related to the uncanniness of the everyday. This uncanniness comes forth from the inability to know what is significant, so that entities sink into a sort of nothingness. This notion of anxiety related to the uncanniness of the everyday comes strikingly close to the feeling we might have when looking at certain photographs by Wall. These two strongly connected notions can further aid our analysis of the works of Jeff Wall, and serve as useful parameters.

It is on this basis that we shall give a focused reading of  some of Jeff Wall’s works for the Greta Meert exhibition in Brussels. We shall do so in order to find out in what capacity we might call Wall’s contemporary works ‘Wittgensteinian’ and/or ‘Heideggerian’ when discussing matters of the everyday and absorption. It is evident that this is a relatively small case study of a selection of works and that we thus cannot make too big of a claim as a result. This paper should be read as a reading of the Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian in Jeff Wall’s recent works as a means of highlighting and analysing this essential facet of Wall’s photography.

Jeff Wall’s Greta Meert Exhibit

For this analysis, we selected the Greta Meert Exhibition, which took place from September 8 to November 12, 2022 in Brussels, for a few reasons. First of all, the photographs in the exhibit were relevant in regard to this paper, as there were sufficient photographs present in which people are photographed. Secondly, the works in the exhibit are mostly recent photographs, which is of course essential when analysing the contemporary aspects of Wall’s works. Also, we feel it is imperative to only analyse works of art we have seen in the flesh, especially given the large formats of the works and the luminescent character they have because of the lighting of the Cibachromes. A selection of seven works was made to be analysed.

The first photograph is the only early photograph we include from this exhibit, The Jewish Cemetery (1986, fig. 3). First, it should be noted that this photograph contains a possible reference to a work by Jacob van Ruisdael, Jewish Cemetery (c. 1650). This is a work, also of a cemetery, with two small, obscure figures in what is an ominous atmosphere. When we look at The Jewish Cemetery, striking observations can be made in regard to the literature discussed.  There are two people in the middle of the picture, which is photographed from a large distance, as, at first, the figures are almost too small to notice with the gravestones surrounding them. The large distance is one of the main aspects which indeed constitute the particular perspective which makes this photograph near-documentary and thus gives the spectator the idea of seeing something as it would have been without the camera. The large distance and the apparent unawareness of the couple also redirects the camera towards us: we are voyeurs, spotting people in what is an intimate, delicate setting. This uncanny feeling might even be enhanced by stripping the male’s chest bare, indicating that he might be digging in the graveyard. The surrounding trees seem to have a double effect: they constitute some sort of breaching of the fourth wall by simply being everywhere along the edges of the cemetery, except in front of it from our point of view. Also, the trees have a darkness and presence that make for an ominous atmosphere. Through the trees, a red car can be spotted. Is this the car of the couple, or is this the car of an attentive observer, …? In either case, the car brings some sort of movement into the picture, something is about to happen, though we cannot be sure of what it might be, constituting an uncanniness in the Heideggerian sense of the word, as we cannot be sure what is what. The Jewish Cemetery does seem to fit into both Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s ideas.

Pawnshop (2009, fig. 4) was made some 23 years after the previous photograph. In this photograph, a man is about to sell his guitar – which he already unpacked while still walking into the cubicle. Another person is already in a cubicle, probably selling something to the nearly invisible shop worker. The fact that the people pictured are turned away from our gaze, while stepping into or standing in a cubicle, is what constitutes a sense of intrusion, or rather intrusion by the wish but also the impossibility to intrude, in this picture as a spectator. In this picture, uncanniness is not particularly present, as there is very little that is ambiguous, and there is no presence of an entity which may be perceived as an entity with Dasein in a surprising manner (like the statue in Window Cleaning). The attractiveness of this picture does not in fact seem to stem from the perspective of the spectator in a visual sense, but more from the intrusion by the spectator in what could be argued to be a humiliating experience for the people involved. If Window Cleaning and The Jewish Cemetery serve as a reference, Pawnshop is lacking in the Wittgensteinian, as well as the Heideggerian, despite the presence of absorption and the near-documentary character. The subjective nature of this analysis should be taken into account, however, as different researchers might very well perceive this and other photographs differently.

Monologue (2013, fig. 5) is perhaps the most theatrical photograph of the exhibition, as the three men pictured stand on an actual platform and are facing the spectator. In fact, the photograph feels staged to the point that absorption is no longer present and the near-documentary character is not-so-near-documentary as most of Wall’s pictures. This photograph reaches a stage where the spectator might not feel as if they witness what the event looks like if the camera were not present, partially because of the theatrical frontality, partially because of the lack of absorption. Also, no entities with an ambiguous Dasein seem to be present.

Listener (2015, fig. 6) is an aggressive photograph, not only in subject matter, but also in the cutting of of the picture. We barely see the faces of the group standing around their half-naked apparent victim. The victim seems to be speaking, while the person closest to him bends a little towards him to listen to him. The photograph appears near-documentary because of its snappy composition, it seems as if it was a quick snapshot by a bystander. What is ‘off’ about the picture, and what thus makes it somewhat Wittgensteinian, is for one the clarity of the photograph – which could never be achieved when quickly photographing a violent scene in motion – as well as the enormous scale of the lightbox. The man on the left is also of importance, as his half-cut-off face is looking directly into the camera, into the eyes of the spectator, making us his accomplices and pointing out our gaze to ourselves. This, however, works against our feeling of absorption; we do not witness people who are unaware, we are in fact amongst them as they acknowledge our existence.

Pair of Interiors (2018, fig. 7) is a work that consists of two separate photographs hung next to each other. On first sight, we witness a couple in a living room or two different rooms, seated in different arrangements between the two photographs. The relationship between the man and the woman seems to change in each photograph, as they are more distant in the second one (even though you could somehow sense a certain mental distance in the first one as well). Upon closer looking at the photographs however, we get anxious – in the true Heideggerian sense of the word: the couple in the first photograph are not the same people as in the second one. They are dressed the exact same way and look very much alike, but they are different people. Their ambiguity and the subtle demolition of reality brings about a certain uncanniness by virtue of blurring entities and disfiguring the apparent reality of the picture. These photographs do achieve this uncanniness only when next to each other, it is an effect created by the combination of them. However, both on their own as together, they are near-documentary in the sense that they appear real on first sight, but the unlikeliness of photographing a couple in this intimate setting and with this absorptive unawareness makes something feel ‘off’. We get the sense that we see what we would have seen without the camera present; we are looking at a particularly Wittgensteinian photograph.

In Man at a Mirror (2019, fig. 8), we see a man looking at himself in the mirror. If not for the title, we would probably not know what sex the subject actually is, as he is somewhat androgyn-looking. He is looking in the mirror of his hotel room in a truly absorbed state, without haste. It is hard to imagine the man being equally absorbed in the mirror if someone else were in the same room with him. We seem to have the same Wittgensteinian effect of the everyday which becomes interesting because of the perspective which is applied by Jeff Wall. Once more, in a more straightforward manner than is often the case, we get a glimpse at the world without a camera through the camera.

The last photograph we include in this paper, is Event (2020, fig. 9). We see two men in an argument, where one is lecturing the other in a slightly aggressive manner. As the title and the setting of the hallway of a fancy venue suggest, they seem to have escaped the gaze of the guests at an event, only to unknowingly step into ours. Their unawareness and absorption into each other, makes for a classic example of Wall’s execution of Wittgenstein’s vision. The two men would probably not be behaving as they are if the photographer would be there in the real world. The spectator thus is witness to something as it could happen without the presence of the camera. Also, as with every one of these photographs, we should take into account the large scale and luminosity of the photographs, which grants them a different status that automatically alters the perspective of the spectator into a less ‘everyday perspective’.

Conclusion

After analysing Jeff Wall’s photographs in the Greta Meert exhibition on the basis of ideas formulated by Wittgenstein and Heidegger, as well as scholars on Jeff Wall’s work, there are some points to be made in conclusion of this paper. Most of the photographs were examples of the Wittgensteinian in some gradation. While not every single photograph was a textbook example of this, there was almost always the feeling of seeing the everyday in a way it would be without a camera. A nuance of high importance in this regard, is that – although Wittgenstein might condemn the coldness of looking applied – some photographs are perhaps deemed to not be quite Wittgensteinian for subjective reasons. In the case of Pawnshop, for example, we deemed the perspective to be bordering too close to the documentary instead of the near-documentary, rendering the picture less interesting. In Monologue, we could argue that the opposite is happening; the theatrical frontality and lack of absorption render the photograph too theatrical to be able to categorise it as Wittgensteinian. These observations confirm that we are working on a spectrum from least Wittgensteinian to most Wittgensteinian, but more interestingly, they reveal that Jeff Wall uses different gradations of Wittgenstein’s vision, different gradations of absorption, and different gradations of theatricality. Heidegger’s vision was not as broadly spread in Wall’s works, so we cannot make the claim that in every Wall photograph, there is something of the Heideggerian. Interestingly, the photographs that intuitively brought about the most appreciation, are the ones that contain the most of Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s ideas. We reveal this bias because it seems useful to further research, as the question could be asked whether this correlation between spectator’s appreciation and the presence of the Wittgensteinian and the Heideggerian is somewhat generalisable.

Bibliography

Bell, Graham, Evocations of the Everyday: The Street Pictures of Jeff Wall, Master’s thesis, University of Oregon, 2009.

Brückle, Wolfgang, ‘Almost Merovingian: On Jeff Wall’s Relation to Almost Everything’, Association of Art Historians, 32(5), 2009, p. 977-995.

Conley, Christine, ‘Morning Cleaning: Jeff Wall and The Large Glass’, Art History, 32, 2009, p. 996-1015.

Fang, Tianjiao, ‘Jeff Wall: The Connection Between Photography and Cinematography’, Asian Journal of Social Science Studies, 7, 2022, p. 65-70.

Fried, Michael, ‘Jeff Wall, Wittgenstein, and the Everyday’, Critical Inquiry, 33(3), 2007, p. 495-526.

Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, 1962, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Tuer, Dot, ‘Jeff Wall’, Ciel Variable, 46, 1999, p. 16-23.

Wall, Jeff, ‘Conceptual, Postconceptual, Nonconceptual: Photography and the Depictive Arts’, Critical Inquiry, 38(4), 2012, p. 694-704.

Wall, Jeff, ‘“Marks of Indifference”: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art’, in: Goldstein, Ann & Rorimer, Anne (eds.), Reconsidering the Object of Art, 1965-1975 (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1995), Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1995, p. 247-267.

Weyts, Kathleen, ‘Er is maar één beeld dat werkt. In gesprek met Jeff Wall’, HART, 228, 2022, p. 30-37.Wittgenstein, Ludwig, ‘note 29th of June 1930’, in: von Wright, Georg Henrik & Nyman, Heikki, Culture and Value: A Selection of the Posthumous Remains, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1998, p. 6-7.

Figures

1. Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona, 1999, transparency on lightbox, 187 x 351 x 2,6 cm, Tate Modern (London).

2. Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, 1923, oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, dust on two glass panels, 277,5 x 175,9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia).

3. Jeff Wall, The Jewish Cemetery, 1986, transparency on lightbox, 76,2 x 244 x 24 cm, Greta Meert Gallery (Brussel).

4. Jeff Wall, Pawnshop, 2009, inkjet print, 174,6 x 171,1 x 5,1 cm, Greta Meert Gallery (Brussel).

5. Jeff Wall, Monologue, 2013, inkjet print, 240 x 281,4 cm, Greta Meert Gallery (Brussel).

6. Jeff Wall, Listener, 2015, inkjet print, 167,2 x 240 x 6,5 cm, Galerie Greta Meert (Brussel).

7. Jeff Wall, Pair of interiors, 2018, 2 inkjet prints, 151,1 x 206,2 cm, Galerie Greta Meert (Brussel).

8. Jeff Wall, Man at a mirror, 2019, inkjet print, 136 x 156,6 x 6,4 cm, Galerie Greta Meert (Brussel).

9. Jeff Wall, Event, 2020, inkjet print, 223,2 x 168,5 x 6,9 cm, Galerie Greta Meert (Brussel).

Geschreven in het kader van studies Kunstwetenschappen, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2023.