Real or imaginary? Step inside the alternate world of Jeff Wall's photographs

In Jeff Wall’s ‘Insomnia’ (1994), a man lies in a foetal position underneath a spindly kitchen table, his brow drenched in sweat as he stares intensely towards the photographer. ‘Event’ (2021) depicts one man jabbing another’s chest in the hallway of a theatrical building. Both images are included in the Canadian artist’s first survey show in Portugal. ‘Time Stands Still’ at MAAT brings together more than sixty works from the last four decades. These two pieces are shown alongside photographs of energetic figures dancing at gigs and tumbling in conflict in the street.

They beg to be read, their movements and tensions rich with narrative potential. But Wall holds back on providing a greater thematic meaning or throughline. These images, often printed to a vast scale, are inspired by fleeting moments he has witnessed in life, or that have come to his imagination. 'I sense an opportunity to make a picture I haven’t made before,' he tells me, when we speak ahead of the opening. 'I don’t define it any further than that. I’m not that interested in what I feel about the event or circumstance itself.'

While the artist takes a step back from defining his work, it frequently captures moods or events that resonate in the wider culture. He tells me that his iconic image ‘Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol, Near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter 1986)’ finds renewed interest whenever the subject of war is in the news. 'Once in a while my pictures do connect with what’s going on. Which is nice, but it’s never intended. Maybe somebody sees what I’ve done differently in that moment.' The image was created from his imagination, though it conveys a palpable, real horror, as a pile of zombie-like soldiers loll and glare at one another. 'It came out of my idol thoughts, there was not anything ‘real’ there, in the sense of a witnessed occurrence. But the war was real, and like many people, I experienced it remotely.'

Reality and fiction are intricately intertwined in Wall’s pieces. Many are backlit, rendering his scenes with a rich depth. When printed at large scale, they feel like spaces that the viewer could walk into. His sets and compositions tend to be carefully considered, but moments of seemingly instinctive moment cut through them. 'I think my work is a bit misunderstood as being the outcome of very precise and controlled decisions, which is only partly true,' he says. 'Unexpected things happen all the time in the process of making something. All my pictures deal with accident, just as all of them are filled with fact.'

Wall’s images are taken using film, and the artist still prints his own works. 'I use a film camera as I think it’s better for what I do,' he says. 'I don’t think it’s behind the times in any way. The only thing that is not up to date about my photography is that it’s not circulating on the internet as its primary mode of appearance.' He has used the word ‘cinematography’ to describe his practice before, not to align it with the experience of watching cinema, but because it takes a more expanded form than the classical idea of photography. His work has also been compared with painting, with its dramatic compositions, awe-inspiring size, and focus on the in-person, original experience. 'Like many people, I have learned a lot from painting,' he says, noting the freedom of scale that comes with painted works, and its independence from the publishing industry. 'For a while, photography accepted that it was a reproduction medium. I have nothing against that, but that isn’t the whole story.'

Jeff Wall. Time Stands Still. Photographs, 1980-2023 is at MAAT, Portugal, until 1 September 2025

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