Jeff Wall and "Gursky's World"

Jeff Wall’s “Liquid Intelligence” introduces concepts about water and its relationship to photography that would never have occurred to me. The importance and relevance of the presence of water in a photograph is very surprising. Wall states, “…but it has to be controlled exactly and cannot be permitted to spill over spaces and mapped out for it in the process, or the picture is ruined” (223). I found this idea a bit ironic because he essentially wants to control something that is virtually uncontrollable. This idea is not just centered in photography. It expands into the “real world” in that levies, and other forms of water control, are built to restrict water’s movement, yet it is known the water will eventually overcome these boundaries and destroy them. I feel like Wall and many others feel they have the ability to control this liquid, yet, no matter how determined, they can never direct it exactly where they want it to go. This uncontrollable nature might appeal to photographers because when they photograph water it will always be in a natural form that embodies the characteristics of a liquid. These characteristics, in turn, connect the photograph to its rich history that, apparently, greatly relates to water.
Not to just tack this onto the end, but when reading “Gursky’s World” I, for some reason, found myself fascinated with the German schooling system. I thought the concept of the diploma being given at the discretion of the teacher is a bit subjective and does not benefit the student if there are bad “student-teacher” relations. The length of Gursky’s schooling also intrigued me, but for an unknown reason, for in comparison to present day schooling six years is not very long. For no apparent reason, this interested me.