Wow, that was really hard to get through. I found Jeff Wall's discussion about western painting, photojournalism, and aesthetecism vastly overwhelming. One part did grab me and pull me in though. on page 68 of the reader, 35 of the article, Wall talks about the expansion of photography as an Art with a "big A": "Photography could emerge socially as art only at the moment when its aesthetic presuppositions seemed to be undergoing a withering radical critique, a critique apparently aimed at foreclosing any further aestheticization or 'artification' of the medium". Basically, with the new avant-garde movement, photography becomes fully accepted as an art form in the complete opposite logic one would suppose. It is kind of like a Chinese finger trap. For over a hundred years, the idea of photography was trying to be forced with all strength. What it took, however, was to go in the opposite direction with the avant-garde to free photography of the non-art trap. I found this to be worth talking about because it is so interesting that the field of photography takes a huge step forward by a few avant garde photographers that expect it to take a step back with their radical revival of the 1920s and 30s movement. This reminds me of a black and white sketch where a single line creates a space and volume out of the blank paper next to it. The work is done in one area while the focus is on the other area. Aside from this singular area of interest, I found the rest of the article difficult to comprehend.