Photography and Jeff Wall

An Exploration into Truth and Reality within Photographic Practice Adhering to a Realist
Aesthetic.

In this essay I will explore notions of truth and reality in relation to photography of a realist aesthetic, in particular the genres of tableau and documentary. Tableau 's roots are in early pictorial photography which strove for balanced and harmonious compositions1. Borrowing from classical painterly aesthetics tableau photographs are made for the wall; to be looked at from a distance like paintings.2 A defining feature of the majority of tableau, and the images referred to in this essay is the use of models, or “posing”3. Documentary photography does not adhere to any particular aesthetic style, instead focusing on “the premise that the photograph is a transcription of reality that contains fact, evidence, and truth.”4

I am interested in the boundaries surrounding the real and authenticity (truth) that photography makes for itself, their flexibility, and whether the nature of documentary leads it to superiority over tableau at transmitting messages. It seems that the transmittance of truths requires a basis in reality, and tableau, constructing rather than directly taking from the world, implies the need for more complicated system of understanding if it is to provide any truth. In the case of realist aesthetics, reality is inferred to the viewer and a contract of reality between image and viewer in place. I am concerned with whether this contract gets broken by tableau, and what implications this has on the transmittance of truth.

Susan Sontag writes:

“The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different
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Jones, Bernard Edward, Encyclopedia of Photography (New York: Arno Press Inc, 1974) 137.
Fried, Michael, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before (London: Yale University Press, 2008) 143 – 144.
Fried, 34.
Stroebel, Leslie, and Richard Zakia, The Focal Encyclopedia of

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