Jeff Wall

Like George Baker, Jeff Wall responds to the changes in photography that were taking place at the end of the twentieth century. He is referring specifically to the trend in post-modern and conceptual photography to incorporate new-age techniques into the established photograph medium. In Photography and Liquid Intelligence, he asserts that these changes are presenting a “confrontation of what you might call the ‘liquid intelligence’ of nature with the glassed-in and relatively ‘dry’ character of the institution of photography” (223). Wall employs water and liquidity as a metaphor for the more conservative photographic techniques, in which nature’s infinite knowledge and beauty guides the formation of the image. I cannot help but to think back to Henry Fox Talbot and his description of photography as “The Pencil of Nature.” Talbot’s description that the presentation of the object (the thing being photographed) is directed by an assertive force of nature, similar to what Wall calls the “liquid intelligence.” Wall describes New-age photography as relying more on advanced and complicated techniques to construct images. Photography has become less about what the image is and more about how and why it was formed. Unlike Baker, who has a clear opinion on the direction that future photography should take, Wall claims apathy. He says, “To me, this is neither good nor bad necessarily, but if this happens, there will be a new displacement of water in photography” (224). It seems as if Jeff Wall fears that new-age photography re-appropriates the power of nature to the photographer. What was once a “liquid intelligence” will become the firm, authorial intelligence of the photographer. Wall says, “The historical consciousness of the medium is altered” (224). The statement is bold, but because Wall refuses to make an opinion on the changing medium, the phrase is vague and powerless.
However, it seems safe to assume that because Wall uses new technologies in his own photographs, he must not see the changes as being altogether bad. He calls his use of life-size images and backlighting cinematography—the combination of photographic and cinematic techniques to “make pictures with a kind of literal presence” (230). He comments that backlighting allows for the “preservation of some aspect of literalism in the construction of the picture” (230). Similarly, life size-photographs are effective not because of their scale, but rather, because they occupy and bring attention to the “present time and present space” (229). Baker discusses cinematography as one of the art forms that should be recognized as photography by adopting an “extended field.” Wall adopts a similar, but not identical argument. He say, “the techniques we normally identify with film are in fact just photographic techniques and therefore, are at least theoretically available to any photographer” (231). Instead of arguing that cinematography falls under the umbrella of photography, he says that all cinemagraphic techniques are just offshoots of photographic techniques. It’s a subtle difference, but could have huge implications.