Barcelona Metropolis

Wall’s interest in photography arose from his experimentation with other art forms. He wasn’t drawn to photography by the documentary impulse of classical photographers. Instead, he approached it with the intention of “imitating” it, learning its qualities, and in a sense, challenging the concept of instantaneity, recording and capturing time’s essence. Wall’s tableaux suspend the factual imperative, the connection to an event that occurred in time, which many consider the cornerstone of the specificity of the photographic phenomenon, which grants it its status as evidence of reality.

Photographs that never happened

Deciphering his work poses the challenge of determining whether the scenes depicted in his photographs actually transpired. To what extent are we faced with documents that show the literal truth of the events we are observing? Many may ponder, upon seeing an image of a beggar on the street, whether she has a name and is suffering. Yet, with Wall’s work, we must consider this aspect of his art as “quasi-documentary”. In essence, the situations he captures never actually happened. Instead, he encapsulates the concerns, passions and problems of everyday life through these reconstructions of the possible. The resulting images are liberated from past events, devoid of the burden of mourning and nostalgia that often characterise classical photographic images. The “quasi-real” images unfold in the present moment as they are observed. These scenes are constructed, bringing their subjects to life, even if they are not real or did not happen exactly as depicted. If it exists within the frame, it becomes plausible. We encounter images that seem documentary in nature, with all their typical elements. For instance, a man is kneeling on the ground, half-naked, surrounded by a group of men whose intentions seem questionable, immediately communicates the situation without the need for a caption, date or location. It elicits raw emotions and depicts a violence that has sadly become commonplace.

Wall’s subjects are mundane, peculiar and detached. For him, the everyday serves as a universe encompassing our entire world, providing the backdrop against which all observable and tangible phenomena unfold. He identifies with Charles Baudelaire’s portrayal of the “painter of modern life” in his 1863 publication. Like Baudelaire, Wall champions the beauty of the circumstantial and the relative, which are inherently tied to specific eras, moralities or passions. This circumstantial essence of beauty enables the assimilation of the sublime, a concept inherently beyond human nature’s grasp, into our understanding.

He’s an observer who captures the essence of everyday life from the streets, storing fleeting moments in his memory to extract the timeless from the transient, from life’s unpredictable flow. Hence, his subjects, though he claims not to work with themes, are the ordinary, the common and the mundane. His task is to unveil the unique and singular from the everyday, the irreproducible. This is the allure of photography, which, unlike painting, introduces specific elements that resist amalgamation into the whole. For example, the actors appear in the photo as they choose, injecting their own everydayness into the frame without the possibility of alteration. Like the worker who, at dawn, cleans the solitary Mies van der Rohe pavilion, when the rays of the rising sun perfectly bisect the horizon of the wall tiles.

In interpreting his works, Wall points out that he hasn’t meticulously controlled their content; there are unpredictable elements. Therefore, analyses attempting to explain motivations may be off the mark. Each viewer, in an instant, sometimes involuntarily, much like in a dream, must construct a personal narrative based on their experience with the artwork.