ABSTRACT
David Campany and Jeff Wall’s dialogue around aesthetics and photography includes a historic review of differential attitudes in the use of the medium, the aesthetic possibilities of picture making, and photography’s relation to artifice. They discuss the distinction between a commitment to “revealing the subject matter,” as with documentary forms, and one in which the single image is central. Not wanting to “imitate the journalist-writer,” Wall chose to engage with representation and the singular “picture.” A phenomenological turn in the discussion encompasses consideration of the mnemonic function, the spectator’s engagement with the image, and the pleasure of “photographic seeing.”
