Wall's "Mark of Indifference"

In Jeff Wall’s “Mark of Indifference,” the role of photography in transforming conceptual art and society was explored. While earlier essays on photography emphasized the medium’s authenticity and its ability to “bring the world into our living rooms,” Wall reveals another side of photography in works such Nauman’s studio photographs. Unlike photojournalism which documents the foreign and the unfamiliar, studio photography focused on portraying self. However, this inward focus and personal depiction is also informed by the photographer’s social and environmental milieu. As a result, these photographs became more than simply documentary records, but also pieces of artistic commentary. Wall also discussed another form of photography that also traced its roots to photojournalism. In Graham’s photo-essay, photographs are not simply autonomous pieces of art. Contrasting with the view of social photographers such as Hine, Graham’s photo-essays are not meant to be viewed autonomously and as evidence. Instead these photographs are meant to be seen as a collection and as illustrations to text. Although the interaction between text and photographs is also explored by Agee and Evans in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, these two components in Graham’s photo-essays seem to be much more contextualizing than iterative. Another aspect discussed was the amateurization of the photographic medium. This amateurization of photography takes the mechanical reproduction of art to the next level. Not only are photographs capable of being mass produced, as a result of modernization, even the camera, the machine that capture photographs, becomes the subject of mass production. This “mass production” in photography is embodied by Ruscha’s building photographs. Instead of being thought of as purely descriptive, the physical details of these ordinary buildings in the photographic collection of do not register within the viewer’s mind. Instead, they build an overall impression, a concept, within the viewers mind. Thus, Wall introduces the ability of modern photographs to be viewed as collection, reinforcing conceptual themes, rather than individual documents of significance and depiction.