Jeff Wall has been producing the large-scale photographs that have paved the way to firmly establish a new photography in contemporary art. He often reconstructs events that he witnessed in real time and intricately orchestrates them into imaginative scenes. He calls this process "cinematographic photography." Boys cutting through a hedge was staged and shot in a process analogous to shooting a film, but one that resulted in a single image. The image is a color transparency lit from behind. In this expert mix of fact and fiction, what appears to be of "snapshot" quality is in fact an image that has been skillfully contrived. (AK)

(Born in Vancouver, Canada, 1946, and lives in Vancouver, Canada)

Boys cutting through a hedge

2003
transparency and light box
204 x 260 cm, edition 1/2
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery
By exchange, Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr. and
the Stevenson Family, 2004
©Jeff Wall
Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, New York