Jeff Wall - Mimic
© Jeff Wall
Things are not what they seem though. The photographer, Jeff Wall, staged the whole thing using actors, and filmed it with a 10x8 view camera. Possibly he took a whole series and selected the one that best fitted his purpose. He relates that he wanted to recreate a real incident that he had witnessed himself. He himself says that he wanted to create a piece of social art, but wittingly or unwittingly, it also says a lot, or makes us think a lot about the roles and uses of photography. Is it a parody or a homage to street photography? Does it repudiate street photography because it seems to say that it all can be made up? What does it say about truth and reality in photography? If it wasn't a photo of a real incident, would a painting have served the same purpose?
By using photography of course, he is making it clear that "it happened", or asking us to believe that it did - the original incident. And because the subject is socially sensitive we might accept it more as being a valid comment. With a painting we would always think he has an axe to grind.
In any photography or art, whether it happened or not is up to whether we believe the credibility of the artist or photographer, and understanding them we might understand the "art"...
another interesting aspect of his work is it's relationship with the cinema. He himself calls this sort of elaborately staged image "cinematographic". The still image has a peculiar relation with the moving one. Films are by and large fictions, photographs not, and yet when you think about it one is just a long series of the other.
http://www.geist.com/camera/mimic