The Colorama - early Jeff Wall-isms?

The Art World has obviously given Jeff Wall the Keys to the Kingdom, but where was it for the last 57 years?

It's been that long since Kodak started hanging pro-filmic constructions - 18 × 60-foot Coloramas - that would have positively dwarfed Wall's "large" photographs. But, of course, when Kodak launched Coloramas on the world - Wall was out of diapers (not by much) - there were no 'Walls' to dwarf.

Question: Are the Coloramas now Art?

Like Wall's work, much conceptualization and control/construction of the pro-filmic moment/event went into their creation. Like Wall's work, many of the Coloramas addressed 'the indeterminate American look' of the era in which they were created. Like Wall's work, or much of it, Coloramas were transparencies displayed on light boxes.

I would also suggest that, like Wall's work, the Coloramas, many of which picture people picturing (Caution - Colliding Realities: in essence, fictive pro-filmic moments of fictive pro-flimic moments), have much to say about the medium itself.

Unlike Wall's work, the Colorama's were created without a nod to Art history and Academia was not involved (no Modernist/Avant-Garde theory here). Unlike Wall's work, the Coloramas were displayed in public places, not galleries or museums. Unlike Wall's work, the Colorama's were seen by millions of Tom, Dick and Harriets, not just the Art crowd.

So, I am seriously wondering if a bit of revisionist Art History is called for. Is the Establishment willing to give credit where credit is due?

In all of his written and spoken Art/Art History speak has Jeff Wall ever mentioned or paid homage to many photographers who over the years were involved in creating Kodak Coloramas? (Honest question, maybe he has).

I am also wondering (on a less serious note) if Kodak, which has been through some recent tough financial times, could dust these suckers off and cut some of their losses. They churned the Coloramas out at the rate of one a month which, over the 40+ years they were being produced, means that they have approximately 4x the inventory of Jeff Wall. At $1,000,000 a pop, that's more than half a billion dollars we're talking about. Kodak used to have an extremely generous Employee Suggestion Program (it made near-millionaires of some) - I wonder if I could at least get a 'finder's' fee?

PS the above Colorama depicts 'the indeterminate American look' of tourism in the Adirondacks in the early 50s.

urban landscape - what I really think about Jeff Wall, or, more accurately, what I really think about his work

The Genesse river, Rochester, NY • click on photo to embiggen it - It's my photo, not Julian Frank'sI'm going to ask you to put your thinking cap on for this one - please read and comment.

The recent Jeff Wall Affair stirred up the photography waters quite a bit, although I am certain that, for some, it elicited little more than a yawn. From the yawn POV, it appears that it is just more of the same-o,same-o, pointy-headed intellectual, effete art/academic establishment, dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin jetson and flotsam.

To a certain extent, I agree.

Others think differently - Len Bacchus wrote; 'I feel Wall will one day claim equal space in the history of art alongside Breughel, Bernini, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Valesquez, Manet, Goya, Cezanne and many other "masters." The criteria here being (other than his own artistic rigor and craft) the "wholeness" of his experience (by that fuzzy term I mean his faithfulness to "what he has seen" — or "the painter of modern life", as he borrowed from Baudelaire) and his large role in changing the course of art following the advent of modernism and the avant-garde.'

To a certain extent, I agree.

From the Yawnist perspective, the JWA is little more than Chapter MCMXCVIII (and counting) in the long standing art world's insistence - formally declared as early as the 1600s - that Art must be distanced from the contingient features of the actual world and exhibit the presence of an active intellegence, aka, the creator of the Art; the painter, the sculptor, the photographer, et al. Yeh, right. Blah, blah, blah...just show me the pictures...

Or, in other words, create it, don't just copy it.

From the Equal-Place-in-the-History-of-Art Department, like his results or not, Wall's work emphatically exhibits the presence of his active intelligence - months and months of pre/post-filmic moment work devoted to conceptualizing and then controlling/constructing every detail of the pro-fimic moment/event. This near-herculean effort in the medium of photography, what Bacchus calls 'artistic rigor and craft', is what endears Wall to academia, curators (an extension of academia), and the purveyors (ever beholden to academic/curatorial benedictions) of Art.

In other words, the man has done his homework (a degree bearing Art historian) and played to the dictates of the High Art world. Cynics in the crowd might suggest something about 'sucking up'...

Yeh, right. Blah, blah, blah...just show me the pictures...

For me, while I appreciate Wall's work and effort - start to finish, his nod to Art history, and his clarity of concept, I still want to see the pictures. And this is where I appreciate Wall's academically perverse attitude - despite the fact that Wall expresses a great admiration for Modernist/Avant-Garde theory and practice which emphasizes concept over content or the connoted over the referent, he still admits to 'liking pictures' (if you can take it, you can read Wall's thoughts about 'liking pictures' here).

Apparently, for Wall, content and form still matter.

If his concept is (simplified) constructing photographic 'realities' that address 'the indeterminate American look', then I think, to my eye and sensibility, he's doing a good job of it. I like most of what I have seen of his photography. I like the look and feel of his photographs and, dispite their constructed artifice, his photographs connote a feeling of 'the spirit of fact'.

An aside - NO, I don't think that his 'fake' photographic constructions in any way undermine the legitimacy of photography as a medium of 'truth' or the 'real', because, make no bones about it and unlike the Wizard of Oz, he wants Dorthy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion to pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

And therein lies my question to you. Has Wall raised the bar? Is it no longer enough to be, however insightful and skilled, just a 'shooter' of the contingient features of the actual world? Is it possible in the Art world for a photographer to be 'invisible' and let the photograph 'speak' for itself?

Or, in other words, what's it all about, Alfie?

FYI - an open invite

The boy and I are going to NYC for a Rangers v Penguins game on March 19th. Our plans also include seeing the Jeff Wall exhibit and, most likely, a photo gallery crawl. If anyone is interested in hooking up with us. let me know.

Woodwards Ruin ~ Julian Frank

Woodwards Ruin • click on photo to embiggen itI love surprises and this one showed up in yesterday's email. It was from Julian Frank, aka Lee Bacchus and Brian Graham - partners in photographic crime, so to speak. Under the collective nom-de-photograph of Julian Frank they are producing, of all things, postcards of Vancouver, Canada. They're creating the photographs using and 8×10 view camera and color negative film - men, or is that a "man", after my own heart, photography-wise.

About the project, Lee Bacchus wrote; "About my landscape. It is one part of a partly finished, partly thought-out project on the visible and invisible within the city. While trying to eschew a purely aesthetic surface (eye candy, to put it simply), I'm trying to "think" through the form here and not over-determine it beforehand. It is open-ended, so that it can suggest and address all that a site like this can: history, memory, progress (or lack thereof) and a kind of upheaval in the geological consciousness (the surface) and unconscious (underground).

I do feel this shot is slightly over-aestheticized (the dusky sky is there as a kind of symbolic end-note, but it still exudes a kind of "beauty"), but unwrapping meaning from the "picturesque" is difficult."