Reflections

Overpass, Stockholm

I finally found the time to finish off the Jeff Wall book after a series of distractions. There was a passage by Jean-Francois Chevrier which just about summed up my views on Jeff Wall's works:

"Untitled, Underpass, confirms that for the painter of modern life, people are not necessarily characters. The anonymous crowd is a physical and dynamic quality of the urban landscape. The representation of modern life is first of all a matter of topographical figuration; pure landscape. Yet a question remains. People cross an overpass. It's clear, as cutting as architecture, bright like the daylight. But beneath the footbridge there might be anything, just as one does not know where these people came from, or where they will go. Everything in the picture is perfectly visible, yet the invisible is there, beneath the bridge, behind the image."

Jeff Wall cites many painters as inspiration but seems to have left out Hopper, even though there is a Hopper like quality in his photos. They are scenes of everyday, but ordinary to the point of challenging our preconceived notions of the everyday. There is a current lurking beneath the calm surface, like how still water runs deep. And so perhaps the truth about life lies in its reflection, not in the smooth veneer which we call the everyday.