with the help of actors, assistants and a wind machine. The result does
not look like a composite since it obeys the rules of the coherent, singular
photograph. But once we sense or know that it may be a composite many
things change, not least our relation to the wind blowing through it. It
becomes a curiously airless image, certainly compared to the still of Gish.
Wind animates Wall’s picture at a level more conceptual than actual. It
captures an idea, not a sudden gust. Moreover, there is an improbable
perfection in Wall’s picture. The bleak setting on the dirt ground cannot
quite anchor its realism. It is as if photographic arrestedness, so in thrall
to the decisive moment as a ‘slice of life’, demands imperfection some-
where. Perhaps Wall’s perfectionism is its own deliberate undoing,
allowing the viewer an entry point. Indeed, formal perfection in art
often seems to have this effect. In other contexts, however, the stakes
are quite different, as a comparison between Wall’s image and Don
McCullin’s reportage shot of a Turkish gunman in Cyprus demonstrates.
The light, gestures, setting and composition are all so ‘right’ here that they
threaten to undermine the intended urgency. McCullin was reluctant to
use it in a news story, since for him it seemed too much like a film still
from a war movie.^32
5137 Queen Christina(Rouben Mamoulian,
1933), still.