The Crooked Path

1st edition, Ludion / Bozar, 2011
Format Hardback, 255 × 300 mm
Pages 256

Condition minor signs of age

The photography of Jeff Wall (born 1946) is deeply rooted in the Vancouver art community from which he emerged in the late 1970s, as well as in the racial and gender politics of contemporary society, which he explores with remarkable clarity in his large-scale photographic light boxes. These works assert an equal status with painting through their scale, depth and compositional precision.

Wall’s practice is also informed by art history, drawing on figures such as Hokusai, Velázquez and Manet, and has influenced at least two generations of photographers, notably the Düsseldorf School—Andreas Gursky once described Wall as “a great model” for his own work.

Jeff Wall: The Crooked Path examines the cultural and artistic context of Wall’s achievements. The artist has selected 25 of his own photographs, spanning from the late 1970s to the present, and positioned them alongside works by Marcel Duchamp, Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Wols, Andreas Gursky, David Claerbout, Thomas Struth, Frank Stella, Robert Smithson, Rodney Graham, Ian Wallace, Lawrence Weiner and R. W. Fassbinder.

The book is organised into ten thematic chapters, each introduced by an interview with Wall conducted by Hans De Wolf. It also includes essays and testimonies by artists and art historians such as Luc Tuymans, Lawrence Weiner, Michael Fried and David Campany.