[ギター音楽] ジェフ・ウォール: 常に写真を探しています私の仕事です写真を探す被写体という人もいます私は出発点と呼びます同じことです何かが起こるんです例えば２００１年にこのドアを開けて外に出た時３、４人の人が荷物を引きずって歩いているのが見えましたカメラを持っていたら写真を撮ったでしょうけれど持っていなかっただからこの出来事を再現する必要がありました２ブロック歩いたところで青空と弧を描く高架橋が見えました ”よしここだ”そう思いましたそれまでこのようなことをしたいと思ったことは一度もありませんでした偶然だったんですこの偶然により全く新しい発想が生まれました何か写真を - 例えばこの本にのっている北斎の”駿州江尻”を見ていたとしますすぐにこれは再現できるぞと思いつきます私たちは何かが起きるのを待たなければなりませんそして一度それが起こればもうやるしか無いんです誰かが牛乳パックを持っていて何かの拍子で撒き散らしてしまう起こり得る話です誰でもミルクはこぼしますただ私はより洗練された方法で見せているだけです [柔らかな電子音楽] 生まれた時からこの街を知っています人生のほとんどをこの街で過ごしましたそういう人は街が好きかー憎んでいるかでしょう多くのことを知っている多くのことがあっただから私もバンクバーに複雑な思いを抱いていますここで仕事をするということはそういった感情と折り合いをつけることだと感じますある瞬間瞬間でどちらの感情が勝るかは全くもって予測できません私の作品がそういった感情を含んでいると思いたいものです ♪ ♪ いまだになぜ自分が絵描きにならなかったのかわかりません１９６４年頃私が１９か２０歳の時に絵をやめました６０年代の半ば概念芸術のようなオルタナティブアートが爆発的に生み出された時期でしたどういうわけか当時のバンクーバーはその風潮にピッタリはまっていたんですだから転向しましたスタジオ持ちの絵描きをやめたんですスタジオは１５歳の時に手に入れたものでした知られていない対象に潜在的な力が宿っていると解ったとき本当に真剣に写真に取り組むことになったと思います That had to do with the scale of the picture, and it seemed to me there was simply no technical reason why photography couldn't become bigger. [beeping of machine] Photographs have a beautiful, molecular, granular surface that both shows itself and hides itself in the image it makes, so there are qualities thatare revealed in photography when it gets larger. [Indistinct chatter] After having seen some advertisements backlighted, I thought, "OK. I'll try "the backlighted. "It's kind of interesting. It has a kind of luminosity that's really different." So then I just started using it, and it worked. It created an object, and the object was sort of, you know, emphatic. There's no real rules about–for me at least– how I should proceed, so sometimes, I build replicas… but when you start building a replica, it can get really exciting and technically interesting and artistically very absorbing to make that thing. [Jeff Wall] Where are you looking? — My hand, my thumb. [Jeff Wall] Look at Andrew's face. Now. Yeah, that's it. Just like that. Oh, that's good. Hold it. Go. Stop. Go. Stop. Nothing in my pictures is fake. Everything that you see happening is really happening. — Action. [Camera clicks, flash pops] Good one. [Camera clicks, flash pops] Good. There's really no difference between capturing a gesture by accident and capturing a gesture by design, so it's not really possible to have fakery in photography, not really. ♪ ♪ I don't think it's very easy to practice any art form very well, so there's no reason why photography should be easy. It's easy to click the shutter. — But they're gonna do a whole run-through first. So I need you guys on your marks just to double-check all the marks before we start. [Jeff Wall] But bringing things together, however you do it, is always difficult because the standards are high. — You're standing in a way that doesn't make you look very tough. — OK. — Make yourself look like someone who's ready to do something bad. —OK. [Jeff Wall] I think working with performers, it's always very collaborative. —Look it yourself if you want to see yourself up close. [Jeff Wall] They always give me things that I didn't even know I wanted from them. — Looks good out here. — You look like a sculpture by Michelangelo right now. [laughs] — Which is great. — Action. [Camera clicks] Good. Let's do another one. Ready… action. [Jeff Wall] I've learned that in order to do what I like to do I need to have an open-ended schedule. It could take 5 days, could take 10 days, it could take 20 days. I don't really know. You can shoot hundreds of pictures of the same thing, and one of them's always different from all the others. It just is the way it goes, and that picture discloses something that wasn't in the plan. It was based on things I'd seen from the bringing of a person under the control of others to a place, and you see that all over the news. That doesn't happen till discussion has come to an end, and so I added something. He talks. And the second thing that happens is the other one listens. Neither of those things is likely to happen in that situation. Talking is great in photography because it can't be captured. It's the elusive element, and that shows you the limits of the art form you're in. I love that about it. It always escapes. [strumming acoustic music] Pictures can never narrate. They can only imply a narrative, but they can never deliver it. So what happens is when the viewer's having that experience what they're really doing is writing the story. They're intuiting a narrative for themselves, which not be the same narrative for everybody. Well, the title of that picture is "Daybreak on an Olive Farm in the Negev, Israel." The picture included the Bedouin farm workers, the olive grove, and one of the biggest prisons in Israel. So it was a great subject of many things. Some sleeping under the stars, who were probably poor, and others sleeping in incarceration. Who knows what they are, and there could be thousands of them there. Probably I identify with those kind of people in some way, and I think I identify with all the people I photograph in some way. So I think artistically a subject has no connection to the viewer unless the picture creates the connection by its artistry, by its beauty. So let's say you come into the gallery and you see a picture of a homeless person and you experience it in a way you hadn't experienced it before because you hadn't seen it in that picture before. Then you will know that the beauty of that picture was caused by that person somehow, and as soon as you realize that that subject can cause that experience, you've changed your own relation to that subject. That's the social value of art, that it does that not by convincing you of anything, telling you you should do this, but by giving you an experience or creating an experience that itself, yeah, alters something. ♪ ♪ The mainstream of my work has been a kind of realism because it's devoted to contemplating photography as a phenomenon, but I don't want to be obliged to a be a reporter all the time, even a pseudo reporter. Works of pictorial art have to be something that can be looked at endlessly. Supposing it flashed into my mind this image of the ocean for no reason. Like a daydream or a moment of imagination. When you have flashes like that, they only last just an amazingly short time, and they're gone, but you remember them. They set off a photographic possibility. For me, there's something called a picture that is there all the time. ♪ ♪ I'm always searching for that picture, the next one. ♪ ♪ [soft electronic music]