Sunday, October 2, 2011

Jeff Wall Photograph Critique



This is an image by Jeff Wall. In this image, we see an Asian man walking down a sidewalk being overtaken by a white male who seems to be dragging along a white female. Its during evening along an industrial part of town. Presumably, all these people are going home after work.

Formally, the arrangement of the three people in the frame is such that our eye goes directly to the Asian person and then goes to the white male. Here we notice that the white male is slanting his eyes to insult the Asian person. We notice that the Asian person is depicted in such a way that is not entirely clear whether (a) He notices the white person and chooses to ignore it or (b) he is just in the process of turning his head but not yet registered the other people. We then look at the female in the photograph, who seems to be lagging behind the man and squinting her eyes. At this point, it is not clear whether she is squinting due to the sunlight or she is expressing disapproval/disgust at her companion's behavior

Jeff Wall is successful with this image in conveying something that goes beyond just the formal aspects of the image. He is calling into question the stereotypes that we hold and how we use them to denigrate other people. Also, maybe racial (and other kinds of) stereotypes exist in our community and sometimes we just haven't come across them (or we have but we choose to look away and ignore them)

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