ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 – ‘Photography en-abyme: towards cinematography’ – extends on the lessons that Wall learned from Fried’s concepts of beholding, absorption, and theatricality, to consider how he applied these ideas in developing a new photography practice, influenced by cinema, in the late 1970s. This includes an examination of the personal experiences and intellectual and artistic influences that lead Wall to invest in the notion of cinematic narrativity as a solution to the failures of modernism and as a means of expanding the territory of photography. A discussion of Wall’s photographic installation Movie Audience (1979) illuminates Wall’s interest in cinema as a frame of reference for photography. This discussion examines Fried’s arguments about the problematic status of cinema in relation to the issue of theatricality. For example, Wall’s Movie Audience serves to illustrate Fried’s claim that the ‘new regime’ of photography (to which, Fried argues, Wall is a central figure) found itself compelled to address issues of beholding. The chapter considers the significance of cinema’s mobile frame within the context of the evolution of the ‘Western Concept of the Picture’, and how the play of presence and absence associated with cinema’s mobile frame resonated with Wall’s critique of 1960s avant-gardism.
