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Jeff Wall (born 1946) is a Canadian photographer. In 2002, he was awarded the Hasselblad Award.
His photographs are often carefully staged like a scene in a film, with full control of all details. Their composition is always well thought through, and often borrows from classical painters like Edouard Manet. Many of his images are large (typically 2x2 meters) transparencies placed in back-lit boxes; Wall says he got the idea during a bus trip between Spain and London where he saw large back-lit advertisements at bus stops. The themes are social and political, such as urban violence, racism, poverty, gender and class conflicts.
A typical image of Jeff Wall is Mimic from 1982. It is a colour transparency, 198 cm by 229 cm. In it, we see three people, a couple and a man, walking towards the camera on a side walk. The street looks like a suburb in a North American town, residential area mixed with light industry. The couple, to the right in the picture, is white, and the single man to the left is of asian origin. The woman is wearing red shorts and a white top displaying her bellybutton. Her boyfriend (I assume, he's holding her hand) is wearing a denim vest, has a full beard and unkempt hair; they give the impression of working class. The asian man is dressed smarter, with a collared shirt; he gives impression of being middle class.
The two men exchange glances. The asian man has his head pointing forward but his eyes look hard left at the couple. The white man has turned his head toward the other man, chin a bit down, looking straight at the Asian, right hand clenched to a fist with the middle extended, pointing to his eye.
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