The Easel

23rd November 2021

Annie Leibovitz: “A lot can be told in those moments in between the main moments”

Nathalie Dassa | Blind | 12th November 2021

Leibovitz is having a moment with multiple shows and a book. The reviews reveal a photographer of disparate parts. Her fashion images often indulge in fantasy, evoking narratives from history or literature as much as they showcase clothing. Her portraiture is about realism, perhaps reflecting her photojournalism roots at Rolling Stone. For Leibovitz, though, everything is a performance, with “both the photographer and [subjects as] contributors to cultural moments.”

22nd November 2021

In Jeff Wall’s photographs, it’s all about the details. But are they important?

Michael Kimmelman | The Washington Post | 10th November 2021

Wall is credited with helping photography transcend its status as “a problematic subset of art.” Intrigued by artifice, he decided to create tableaux – near-documentary re-creations. These images have little details seemingly incongruent with the ‘face-value’ story. Once this is noticed, the “documentary value” of the image “collapses like a house of cards … [unlike a movie] Wall’s photographs seem stolen from a narrative timeline with no backstory, or denouement in the offing.”

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