【美国电台节目】他的摆拍也是一种艺术

TRANSCRIPT

NOEL KING, HOST:

Glenstone, a modern artmuseum outside of Washington, D.C., is showing massive photographs by theCanadian artist Jeff Wall. He has said of his method, I begin by notphotographing. NPR's special correspondent Susan Stamberg went to see aretrospective of his work.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Itwas really disconcerting. In a gallery talking with Jeff Wall, over hisshoulder I saw a woman staring at us - nosy. But she wasn't real. I mean, shewas, but in a photograph, enlarged to be as big as we were, looking so realbecause the picture was a transparency on film, with light coming from behindin a light box. But Wall says, I don't like the idea of capturing life, so hedoesn't carry a camera.

JEFF WALL: They're notobliged to be a reporter. I can start from anywhere. I can start from somethingI have witnessed, something I haven't witnessed, something I read - anything.

STAMBERG: He sees somethingdisturbing - a white man pulling his eyelid back into a slant as he passes anAsian man on the street.

WALL: It's not a friendlygesture.

STAMBERG: What he's seenstays with him. He thinks about it for a while. Then, if he decides he can makesomething out of it, he recreates it - hires performers, scouts locations andstages the scene for his camera and then makes his art.

WALL: I like it that I didn'tcatch it with any kind of device. I just captured it with my own experience.

STAMBERG: Chief curator anddirector of Glenstone Emily Rales thinks Wall is one of the most influentialartists of the last 40 years.

EMILY RALES: He did forphotography what nobody else has been able to do, which is to elevate it fromphotojournalism and street photography to the level of sculpture and painting,really.

STAMBERG: Jeff Wall beganworking this way in the 1970s. After 20 years, he gave up color andtransparency for a while and turned to photography's oldest form, black andwhite. It has a documentary quality. But again, it's not a documentary.Spotting a guy through the window of a nearby shelter mopping the floor...

WALL: Something about hiskind of peaceful, absorbed quality, again, did that thing. It made me thinkthat I could do something with this.

STAMBERG: Wall hired a youngman to model for him - pensive, melancholy. It puts loneliness in black andwhite - how loneliness can feel. On the other hand, you can't look at his 2007color work "Dressing Poultry" without smiling, although the subjectis pretty grim. In a barn, a farm family is preparing their chickens formarket.

WALL: You'll notice that achicken has been dropped into that cone upside down.

WALL: The head comes throughthe bottom of the cone. The knife is in his hand. A bucket is below.

STAMBERG: But the thing is,they're all having such a good time.

WALL: Well, they were havinga good time at this moment.

STAMBERG: It's a family.Slaughtering chickens is just part of everyday life for them. When he saw oneof the women laughing, Wall knew that was the image he'd use.

WALL: Because it takes thewhole picture somewhere else.

STAMBERG:It becomes a Jeff Wall picture - disturbing, cruel, fun, real. 

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