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Jeff Wall: Marian Goodman Gallery New York April 16-May 29.

Article Excerpt
Happy was the age when one knew for certain that documentary photography was just that! Today things are different. Stripped of a stable home life, the genre of documentary photography drifts about, sleeps around and pops up in the strangest places. Indeed, over the last few years, to put these developments in a more positive light, the genre of documentary photography has undergone a tremendous expansion and revitalization. That documentary film now vies with traditional narrative film as good entertainment is only one example of a larger phenomenon that is also exerting its effects in the art world and specifically on photography.

Into this complex and mobile field of hybridizing tendencies Jeff Wall introduces the notion of the "near documentary," a description that accompanies a set of new photographs. Wall's question in these works appears to be a Lukácsian one: what constitutes the lotus of energies of a genre if and when that genre functions in new ways? Wall's interest is not in striking an elegiac chord at the passing of a golden age, however. The lesson of Brecht is far too important. Nevertheless, by the look of things...

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