Research: Jeff Wall, Alejandro Chaskielberg and Logan Crable

In my search for photographers who have worked at creating images that are either staged, or compiled from several negatives to make a larger - fictional - scene, I found three whom I wanted to include here as research.

Jeff Wall is a Canadian artist best known for exhibiting his photography work as backlit phototransparencies. The pictures themselves are mostly multifaceted scenarios, often set up in homage to the work of famous painters and artists ('The Destroyed Room' and Delacroix, 'A Sudden Gust of Wind' and Hokusai). They require multiple photographs to be digitally and seamlessly montaged together and tend to take a year or two to complete. His pictures are all about the little details whether they are packed with areas for inspection or more minimal in their levels of interest.

The time he spends on each piece, and the use of phototransparencies, is inspiring but obviously something I do not have the option to take up. His art history influenced compositions and use of both digital post production and film photography are elements I can draw from in my own work.

 

Alejandro Chaskielberg is an Argentinian photographer who last year published the book La Creciente of photographs made on the Paraná River Delta. The portraits are all shot under moonlight and aided by flashlights, fire and strobes. In a deliberate attempt to avoid the standard documentary style they are all posed portraits reenacting typical moments and aspects of their day to day life. This brings a definite and distinctive style to the pictures, the shadows and deeper colours especially being darker than they would have under daylight or just flash.

Logan Crable is based in Brooklyn, New York having graduated with a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design in Spring of 2010. I discovered his work by searching the internet for the phrase 'fictional scenarios' combined with 'photography' and my results turned up a statement from Crable on this page.

“In this body of work I have created fictional scenarios using allegorical characters to represent different abstract moments. I push the realistic element in my photographs to make them believable but surreal. I want to blur the line between reality and fiction. This is a strange world that goes much further than what one first perceives. Understanding that these pictures have a strong sense of narrative is also important to me. I want them to appear as unfinished stories, enacting themselves long after the viewer is gone.”

This quote has elements of what I propose for my series. The 'fictional scenarios', and also the blurring of reality and creating pictures with a 'strong sense of narrative' are similar to my aims. Although his pictures are portraiture rather than the more still life I will be working on, the point behind them appears to be related.