Jeff Wall (b.1946) adopts the nineteenth-century poet Baudelaire's famous description of one of
his contemporaries as 'a painter of modern life' to describe his own very different work: huge
transparencies mounted on to light boxes that diffuse a brilliant glow of white light evenly
through his photographs of contemporary urban scenes and 'constructed' social situations. Wall
is foremost among the pioneering artists who since the late 1960s have brought photography to
the forefront of contemporary art. His constructed images employ the latest sophisticated
technology in the creation of compelling tableaux which are evocative of subjects ranging from
Hollywood cinema to nineteenth-century history painting. When exhibited in their glowing light
boxes they evoke both the seduction of the cinema screen and the physical presence of
minimalist sculptures such as Dan Flavin's fluorescent light installations or Donald Judd's
metal and Perspex wall reliefs. All of these elements - traditional figurative painting cinema
Minimalism Conceptual art documentary photography - are consciously evoked and explored in
Wall's work. Associated closely since the late 1960s with Conceptual artists such as Dan Graham
with whom he collaborated on The Children's Pavilion (1988-93) Wall has engaged at a
sophisticated level with theories of representation and its social dimensions both as an artist
and as a theoretical writer on contemporary art and culture.
