The best part of this Web exhibition of Jeff's Wall's painterly photographs is being able to read Wall's interviews and essays while you are viewing thumbnail representations of his pictures. These texts are based on interviews conducted with Wall since 1985, collected from a wide variety of publications, that you may not happen to have tucked under your arm when viewing the pictures full size in the gallery (although these writings have been compiled in "Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews", an anthology published to accompany the show). It's hard for Web reproductions to do justice to Wall's photographs, despite the fact that back-lit display on a computer screen is somewhat similar to Wall's technique of presenting his pictures on lightboxes. This points out another great value of the Web exhibition - to build interest in the physical exhibition, now on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and traveling to the Art Institute of Chicago in June; and San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art in October.
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