These are images that take you by surprise and leave a lasting impression. They are not easy to predict, but they do require viewers to pay close attention and be committed. You can see this for yourself by visiting the Jeff Wall: Photographs exhibition at Gallerie d’Italia – Turin. Although they may seem real at first, they actually represent something very similar to reality.
Spanning over 40 years, his work moves between spectacular stagecraft and documentary observation, creating images that examine every aspect of contemporary society. At once familiar and uncanny, everyday situations are elevated to the level of almost dreamlike scenes. The observer is “included” in the scene through the life-size presentation of the pictures, which enhances their evocative power. While Jeff Wall favours the photographic tableau as a lone image, he has created almost twenty multi-part works during his career: the exhibition features three of them.
Through his commitment to capturing everyday life, Wall explores major social and political issues, examining the complex ways in which they influence our lives. Enigmatic in nature, his body of work is pervaded by profound inquiries into subjects as diverse as the nature of reality, armed conflict, human gender, race, and class. Drawing on the work of many great photographers and painters, his art is also influenced by literature and cinema, particularly Italian neo-realism, which combines the everyday with the dramatic.
Wall’s photographs are somewhat akin to literary works with an in medias res incipit, a term coined by the Roman poet Horace in his Ars Poetica to describe a narrative technique that plunges the reader directly into the heart of the story without preamble, rather than following the natural order of the fabula. The audience is thus catapulted straight into the heart of the narrative, where a sense of curiosity keeps them glued to the page. The same is true of Wall’s photographs, which draw the viewer in. Further exploration of the image reveals details about previous or subsequent events, creating suspense and encouraging participation.
One interesting aspect of photography that Jeff Wall has explored is the relationship between silence and words. “The silence that characterises photography has rarely been discussed”, curator David Campany explains, “perhaps because it is taken for granted. Yet it is precisely this silence that allows this art form to describe without explaining and which has led to photography being accompanied by written or spoken words since its beginnings”. He adds: “Only in the realm of art can this necessity be dispensed with, and photography exists as an image to be contemplated, as an opportunity for the viewer to respond subjectively”. A photograph freezes and silences the reality from which it was “captured”. This is one of the factors that attracts Jeff Wall’s interest in sound and silence and in what photography cannot reveal”.
“Even the titles of his works focus attention on the missing sounds, on the voices that photography neither deliberately excludes nor silence, yet is still unable to capture. Instead, what we have is the mute visible, and the body language of these unheard verbal acts”, says Campany. Meanwhile, Wall adds that all his images “concerning speech, verbal communication, are actually about how people act to create something in common, how they try to find a way to live together”.
This exhibition is a major survey, selecting from every aspect of Jeff Wall’s oeuvre. It traces the multi-layered development of his work from the late 1980s to the present day. With 27 works on display, the exhibition showcases the full spectrum of the Canadian photographer’s work, spanning from the 1980s to his most recent creations in 2023. It provides an insight into the intricate processes behind their creation.
The exhibition includes a significant selection of Wall’s lightbox photographs, which draw inspiration from the language of advertising, as well as black-and-white and colour prints. His large-scale images, presented at life-size, exert a magnetic appeal on viewers.
Unlike a photojournalist, who captures fleeting moments and real events, Wall does not hunt for images. “I’m not a hunter of images”. Instead, he works over extended periods. He uses digital technologies to create elaborate photographic tableaux. These are staged and lit through a process similar to filmmaking. The outcome is what has been named “almost” documentary photography, in which regular scenes are meticulously arranged. “The freedom I had to recompose the scenes brought new elements, which I found more interesting than what I had actually seen. This freedom is one of the basic elements that I try to preserve in my work.”, Wall adds. His works often draw on references to masterpieces from the worlds of art, literature and cinema, particularly Italian Neorealism.
The exhibition includes works such as The Thinker (a photographic reinterpretation of Rodin’s The Thinker), After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (inspired by the novel by American writer Ralph Ellison), and Odradek, Táboritská 8, Prague, 18 July 1994, inspired by a story by Franz Kafka.
The exhibition Jeff Wall: Photographs is curated by David Campany, who has known and worked with Wall for nearly two decades. Campany, art critic and Creative Director of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, has published several essays and conversations with Wall and exhibited his photographs at the ICP New York, Whitechapel Gallery London, Le Bal Paris and FoMu Antwerp.
The catalogue, titled Jeff Wall Photographs and curated by David Campany, is published by Allemandi Editore.
As part of the museum’s traditional #INSIDE Wednesday evening public programme, the exhibition is accompanied by a rich programme of free public events.
The Gallerie d’Italia – Turin is part of the Gallerie d’Italia museum network by Intesa Sanpaolo.
During this period, there is an interesting opportunity to further explore the author’s work with the exhibition Jeff Wall: Living, Working, Surviving at Fondazione MAST in Bologna.
Paola Sammartano
Jeff Wall : Photographs
From October 9, 2025, to February 1, 2026
Gallerie d’Italia – Turin, Intesa Sanpaolo Museum
Piazza San Carlo 156
10121 Turin
Italy
https://gallerieditalia.com/it/torino/
