Visual cultures Year 2 Journal 2

Jeff Wall and Tom Hunter

Jeff wall

Jeff wall is a Canadian born photographer his work blurs the difference between straight documentary photographs and constructed photographs. Jeff wall is famously known for setting up photographs to controversy and to get his work talked about. 

 The image to the left is one of Jeff Walls more controversial images. The image itself looks entirely real, more like street photography but  it is in fact completely staged. upon analyzing the image it is clear to see that the image has a racial focus.

You can tell its in America due to the straight streets in the background, this gives the image a location, there is an Asian male and a Caucasian male, the Caucasian male is with the girl to his left as they are shown holding hands. The Asian male appears to be just walking down the street as the Caucasian male turns to walk towards him pulling his eye to the side with his hand to symbolize the eye shape of an Asian. This directly reflects how society views race in the 21st century, racism has always been a horrible fact of life for all races and still goes on today's day and ago. Although the image is staged, Jeff Wall by creating this image is tackling a very real problem within society in the 21st century and through this photograph it brings up a topic to thousands of people around the world. 

Another example of Jeff wall staging photographs is his work called 'dead troops talk' (shown to the left). This is a staged photograph that is meant to represent what happened after an ambush of a red army patrol in Afghanistan in 1986. 

You can clearly see that the soilders depited are wounded some in a way that would surley be fatal but are somehow still animated and are doing things a living person would. For example holding their heads, gazing at their hands etc.

Tom Hunter

Tom hunter was born in Hackney, London and still lives and works their today. Tom Hunter is known for recreating classic paintings by giving them a modern twist in photography.

Tom hunter re created the famous painting by William Holman Hunt entitled The hireling Shepard  created in 1854 (shown to the right). Tom's images do not directly copy these classic examples of art, he takes the concept behind the paintings and modernizes it into an image that reflects society in the present day.

(Tom hunters example is shown to the left)

opposed to using the original paintings title Tom opts to create his own, this modern re creation is entitles 'Hackney man' and was created in 2000.

other examples of Tom hunter doing this are shown below;

Left: Mallais Ophelia 1851-2

Right: Tom hunter, The way home 2000