This year’s birthday was Lush (initial cap intended!) Much better than the Bridget Jones’ style crying-in-the-bath episode last year. I took the day off (should be a human right), and spent a luscious, indulgent afternoon on the South Bank, breathing in the air swirled around by passers-by and tall London busses on Waterloo Bridge (‘with tears in my eyes...’*). I saw the Jeff Wall photography exhibition at Tate Modern. I studied some of his stuff in American Photo-texts for my MA, and I’d forgotten how clever he is at distorting reality so intently that it comes full circle and appears real again. Take the image Milk.
At first glance it’s a shot in a lifetime, the hapless photographer happens upon a vagabond cracking open a lively carton of milk outside an anonymous looking building. That first reading/viewing is an illusion though. All of Wall’s work is set-up and directed like a movie. Even so, the message is still as strong. I kinda love this photo. I read it as a commentary on the eclectic nature of city life. The only action in the image is the milk, which we see in full flight spraying out of the carton. It’s beautiful, a white fan reaching up to the sky. Of course, a second later the liquid will stain the man’s clothes and run over the clean paving stones. We’re privileged to be caught in a moment that is not-quite, never going to reach its destination. The man is looking away from the action, and in doing so he chooses to occupy a space outside of the image. He’s every bit involved and every bit detached from his surroundings. Like so many in the city, life carries on around him, just inside his peripheral vision. Part of the action, yet completely passive, disengaged. ‘Love it!’ as my friend T would say!
* Ref to a Wendy Cope poem called 'Jenny'
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