This book grapples with fundamental questions about the evolving nature of pictorial representation, and the role photography has played in this ongoing process. These issues are explored through a close analysis of key themes that underpin the photography practice of Canadian artist Jeff Wall and through examining important works that have defined his oeuvre. Wall’s strategic revival of ‘the picture’ has had a resounding influence on the development of contemporary art photography, by expanding the conceptual and technical frameworks of the medium and introducing a self-reflexive criticality. Naomi Merritt brings a new and original contribution to the scholarship on one of the most significant figures to have shaped the course of contemporary art photography since the 1970s and shines a light on the multilayered connections between photography and art. This book will be of interest to scholars in the history of photography, art and visual culture, and contemporary art history.
"Jeff Wall is one of the most highly regarded artists at work in the world today and has played a key role in establishing photography as a contemporary art form. Jeff Wall: Photographs 1978-2004 has been developed in close collaboration with the artist and accompanies a major retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern, London. Featuring Wall's best known works, the large-scale carefully staged scenes presented as illuminated lightboxes, as well as black-and-white photographs, the book includes an insightful essay by Sheena Wagstaff. In it she examines the impact of art history and cinema on Wall's practice, revealing how he combines documentary techniques with meticulous staging and digital collage to realise his extraordinary vision."--BOOK JACKET.
Jeff Wall and Jacques Herzog are among art and architecture's most successful representatives. Award-winning photographer Wall's photography of Herzog & de Meuron's Dominus Winery in California (1999) represents the point of departure for a discussion on the relationship between art and photography. Questions arise on topics such as "photogenic architecture," the construction of pictures and buildings, and the question of time.
Learn to ask better, more helpful questions of your work so that you can create stronger and more powerful photographs.
Photographers often look at an image—one they’ve either already created or are in the process of making—and ask themselves a simple question: “Is this a good photograph?” It’s an understandable question, but it’s really not very helpful. How are you supposed to answer that? What does “good” even mean? Is it the same for everyone?
What if you were equipped to ask better, more constructive questions of your work so that you could think more intentionally and creatively, and in doing so, bring more specific action and vision to the act of creating photographs? What if asking stronger questions allowed you to establish a more effective approach to your image-making? In The Heart of the Photograph: 100 Questions for Making Stronger, More Expressive Photographs, photographer and author David duChemin helps you learn to ask better questions of your work in order to craft more successful photographs—photographs that express and connect, photographs that are strong and, above all, photographs that are truly yours.
From the big-picture questions—What do I want this image to accomplish?—to the more detail-oriented questions that help you get there—What is the light doing? Where do the lines lead? What can I do about it?—David walks you through his thought process so that you can establish your own. Along the way, he discusses the building blocks from which compelling photographs are made, such as gesture, balance, scale, contrast, perspective, story, memory, symbolism, and much more. The Heart of the Photograph is not a theoretical book. It is a practical and useful book that equips you to think more intentionally as a photographer and empowers you to ask more helpful questions of you and your work, so that you can produce images that are not only better than “good,” but as powerful and authentic as you hope them to be.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Better Questions
PART ONE: A GOOD PHOTOGRAPH? Is It Good? The Audience's Good The Photographer's Good
PART TWO: BETTER THAN GOOD Better Subjects
PART THREE: BETTER EXPRESSION Exploration and Expression What Is the Light Doing? What Does Colour Contribute? What Role Do the Lines and Shapes Play? What's Your Point of View? What Is the Quality of the Moment? Where Is the Story? Where Is the Contrast? What About Balance and Tension? What Is the Energy? How Can I Use Space and Scale? Can I Go Deeper? What About the Frame? Do the Elements Repeat? Harmony Can I Exclude More? Where Does the Eye Go? How Does It Feel? Where's the Mystery? Remember When? Can I Use Symbols? Am I Being Too Literal?
PART FOUR: BETTER PHOTOGRAPHS The Heart of the Photograph Index
From the late 1970s onward, serious art photography began to be made at large scale and for the wall. Michael Fried argues that this immediately compelled photographers to grapple with issues centering on the relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it that until then had been the province only of painting. Fried further demonstrates that certain philosophically deep problems—associated with notions of theatricality, literalness, and objecthood, and touching on the role of original intention in artistic production, first discussed in his controversial essay “Art and Objecthood” (1967)—have come to the fore once again in recent photography. This means that the photographic “ghetto” no longer exists; instead photography is at the cutting edge of contemporary art as never before. Among the photographers and video-makers whose work receives serious attention in this powerfully argued book are Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Luc Delahaye, Rineke Dijkstra, Patrick Faigenbaum, Roland Fischer, Thomas Demand, Candida Höfer, Beat Streuli, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, James Welling, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Future discussions of the new art photography will have no choice but to take a stand for or against Fried’s conclusions.
Nick Waplington was born on Bikini Atol and lives and works in London. The Indecisive Memento is his fifth book, previous titles include Safety In Numbers 1997 and Other Edens 1993. He is currently riding his unicycle from London to Beijing to hightlight the plight of paparazzi photographers whose livelihood is being threatened by the advent of digital technology and overzealous protectionist new legislation.
