Response to Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall reminded me of Andreas Gursky in the sense that both of them took very large, interesting photos of architectural buildings. I thought the image of the 180 degree inside of the building was a fishbowl kind of effect that was very cool to look at. I think he did a good job of conveying emotion in his photographs. In his photograph of the Asian man walking by the couple, there are racist connotations through the man squinting his eye with his finger, and his trophy white-looking girlfriend who is made to look superior through the way she’s dressed. Just by looking at them, especially at how far away they are standing from the man, you can sense the anger and disgust of his race. Similarly with the picture of the destroyed room, the emotion leaps right out of the picture. It is obvious that it is a woman’s room because of the clothes and shoes all over the floor, but it angered me that they had to make it a woman because it implies that she is weak and emotionally unstable, unable to handle her emotions. I think it would be cool if his photos could have been in magazines like Life and Time, so people were more aware of their social impact of their choices on others. I really liked how complex his photos could look, and I felt like it would become tedious to stag such complex scenes for his photographs, like in the destroyed woman’s room.