Department of Art History at the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design from 1974–1975. Wall
returned to Vancouver in 1976, and was engaged as
an Associate Professor in the Centre for the Arts,
Simon Fraser University until 1987.
During his tenure at Simon Fraser University,
Wall actively pursued his own art practice and
began to experiment with back-lit Cibrachrome
transparencies, creating images such as Faking
Deathin 1977. The following year, he produced
an image that would be a watershed to his mature
work, entitledThe Destroyed Room(1978). It was
exhibited in the window of Nova Gallery in Van-
couver, in Wall’s first solo exhibition. As a number
of Wall’s photographs have strong connections to
classical painting and to art history, this photo-
graph can be viewed as a contemporary tale of
the moments following the action inThe Death of
Sardanapalus (1827) by Eugene Delacroix. The image of a bright red room with an overturned, torn mattress, clothes strewn on the floor, and smashed furniture is evocative of an establishing shot in the opening of a film, where the viewer sees the aftermath of events, and later the story is developed through flashbacks. It is clear from the wreckage that something has occurred, but exactly what is left ambiguous. Furthermore, there are clues that the scene is staged, such as the porcelain figure of a woman that is carefully placed on top of the dresser, and the fact that the room is actu- ally part of a set. An equally important work from this early per- iod isPicture for Women(1979). As Wall had done withThe Destroyed Room, this second photograph quotes a painting, in this case, Edouard Manet’sA Bar at the Folies-Bergeres(1882). The painting is
held in the collection of the Courtauld, which Wall
would have had the opportunity to study in depth
while he was a student. The woman in Wall’s
photograph echoes the pose of the barmaid in
Manet’s painting; however, instead of seeing her
back in the mirror behind the bar, the viewer sees
Wall and his camera. Wall has figured as the sub-
ject in other works such asDouble Self-Portrait
(1979), but inPicture for Women, he clearly pro-
blematises the position of the artist in relation to
the model and to the viewer, and furthermore en-
gages with the feminist debate that these positions
historically have been gendered.
Following his breakthroughs withThe Destroyed
RoomandPicture for Women, Wall produced a
body of large-format ‘‘staged’’ photographs, sump-
tuously presented in lightboxes. The origins of the
staged photograph can be traced to the nineteenth-
century, such as the allegorical subjects employed
by Oscar Gustav Rejlander and Julia Margaret
Cameron. The photographic representation of a
tableau vivant stems not only from the related
traditions in genre and in history painting, but
also from the Victorian love of theatrical perfor-
mances and poetry recitals. Wall’s photographs
bear witness to this historical legacy, certainly,
but more significantly, his photographs reflect his
own investigations of the evocative powers of cine-
matography, as well as the persuasive authority
and pervasiveness of commercial advertisements.
The physical scale and luminosity emanating
from Wall’s lightbox photographs is reminiscent
of a movie screen. In keeping with this relationship
to film, it is interesting to note that Wall’s working
method involves hiring a cast of actors or models.
While the inspiration for the images is very often
something Wall has experienced or witnessed on
the street, the finished photograph itself is not doc-
umentary in nature. The depicted scenes are care-
fully scripted and rehearsed. Wall will make the
actors run through the actions over and over,
until he achieves the desired effect. In this sense,
his photographs can be read as even better versions
of the ‘‘real’’ sequence of events, because the viewer
is given the benefit of Wall’s introspection. This
blurring of the lines between fact and fiction is
what makes his photographs so compelling, in the
same way that one can be completely drawn in to
actions that transpire on film.
In 1987, Wall returned to his alma mater as a
Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the
University of British Columbia. The end of the
1980s and beginning of the 1990s saw shifts in
Wall’s choices of subject matter. In this period, he
would focus less often on incidents from real life,
and instead find sources in his own dreams and
imagination. At this time, he produced important
photographs such as the nightmarish bacchanalia
ofThe Vampires’ Picnic(1991). The theatricality of
this image is accentuated by the dramatically lit
figures emerging from the darkness of the forest.
As with many of Wall’s photographs, the viewer
expects to hear sound, and though the moment had
been lifted out of time, more like a film still than a
photograph, more like a Greek tragedy than an
historical painting, or more precisely, a combina-
tion of all these things.
The Stumbling Block(1991) marks the introduc-
tion of computer-aided imagery in Wall’s photo-
graphs.The Stumbling Blockis a busy street scene
in which a passerby turns to witness a young
woman tumbling over an obstacle, in the form of
a man dressed in protective padding. A man in
business attire, who appears to have already takenWALL, JEFF