Jeff Wall, Exhibit at MoMA

Pulled the extract below off the Tate Gallery website. The photo (large transparency) shown here is magnificent, but I immediately determined it had to be staged. Every leaf and flying paper and the hat were part of a perfect composition. Nothing like that happens so perfectly when one snaps.

The decisive moment redefined. Or differently pre-envisioned.

Excellent show - worth seeing.

"In the early 1990s, Wall began to use computers in the construction of his photographs. He commented: 'I've been able to experiment with a new range of subjects or types of picture that weren't really possible for me before... I have always considered my work to be a mimesis of the effects of cinema and of painting (at least traditional painting), and so the fictional, formal and poetic part of it has always been very important.' While his use of digital montage is obvious in his more implausible scenarios, Wall also regularly applies the process to his realistic pictures."



"This work is one of Wall's earliest digital montages. It refers directly to a woodblock print by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. Wall transposes the nineteenth-century Japanese scene to a contemporary cranberry farm near Vancouver. Amateur actors play the odd assortment of rural and city characters, surprised by the forces of nature. It required over 100 photographs, taken over the course of more than a year, to achieve a seamless montage that gives the illusion of capturing a real moment in time."

Click here.