by Kim Nicolini - 15 Jan., 2008

  Staged Spontaneity: Jeff Wall at SFMOMA

    by Kim Nicolini

Insomnia, 1994

What a surprise to stumble across the Jeff Wall retrospective during my recent trip to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I’ve seen a few of Wall's pieces in museums, but I’ve never seen an entire retrospective. At the SFMOMA, galleries and galleries and galleries are full of his enormous light boxes filled with his profoundly complex narratives. When I say profoundly complex, what I mean is that Wall’s photos on the surface seem quite basic and almost minimal, but as your eyes move through the work, an infinite array of details emerge and you find yourself reading deeper and deeper into the seemingly most innocuous details. Every single fraction of the frame has weight and story – a loose brick, a dirt stain on fabric, the leg of a chair, a weed in a sidewalk crack. There is no way to approximate the experience of seeing the Jeff Wall pieces in person because you cannot replicate the effect of images projected via light and transparencies. You can get a sense of the range of work in the exhibit by cruising through the photos here.

Unequivocally, Insomnia (1994) was my favorite piece in the show. When I first looked at it, I thought it was a gorgeously bleak piece of American realism. Then as I took a closer look and studied the photograph, I realized that the image is staged. Indeed, most of the Wall photographs are Staged Spontaneity or Staged Snapshots. Not unlike the scenarios created by Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall's photographs contain an entire movie in a single image. I'm sure my love of cinema feeds my appreciation for this type of staged photography. I found myself reading through each fraction of the photo as if I were clicking through film reels or turning pages of a book. Rather than focusing on the man on the floor in Insomnia, I started digesting all the details within the picture – the dirty empty coffee maker, the crack in the kitchen cabinet door, the toaster oven, the bottle of dish soap, the towel on the chair, the salt shaker. I was particularly transfixed by the paper bag gaping from the top of the refrigerator and the plugged up vent hole above the stove. These two objects mirror each other, and they frame the psychic space of the photograph. I could have studied every fraction of this photo for hours. Because of the way the images are projected through light, every inch of the surface of the photograph is brought to life. Every object contains a story. When we see the towel or the bag, we’re not just seeing these objects but understanding that they have weight and history. We feel the traces of the actions that led to their current state. The objects in the photograph are the man on the floor and his life. His life is contained in these objects.

Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona 1999

I was also completely captivated by Wall’s Morning Cleaning (1999). At first, I was drawn into the photo because of the architectural space. The geometric composition and split framing drew me to the piece. The way the colors are blocked and the light seeps in from the windows caught my eye. But as I started looking closer, all the fringe details sucked me deeper into the picture – the grime in the cracks of the leather furniture, the way that every chair is slightly askew, the haphazard messiness of the curtains, the dirt and lint on the rug. While at first glance, the photograph seems crisp and clean, denoting a kind of modernist purity, on closer inspection the cleanliness is tainted by a kind of grime and filth. This could be extended to the grime of the class narrative that is played out so subtly – the cleaning man bent over his yellow bucket in this seemly pristine cultural space. I was also led to the edges of the frame where a web of reflections is caught inside the glass taunting me to try to look deeper, to excavate the layers of the work. All the while, a blurred figure of the nude female sculpture lurks behind smears of soap on glass. The whole photo is a play on perception versus reality. As we drill further and further into the work, we notice the absolute precision of the composition while excavating the “corruption” of the image. It’s brilliant.

I could probably write a book on every Jeff Wall photograph in the exhibit. I will tell you that the exhibit ends January 27, so if you’re lucky enough to be in the Bay Area, you may want to check it out.

Kim Nicolini is an artist, poet and cultural critic. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her partner, daughter, and a menagerie of beasts. She works a day job to support her art and culture habits. Her work has appeared in Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Bullhorn, Counterpunch and Berkeley Poetry Review. She can be reached at:

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