Taking these critical voices seriously, I now proceed to discussing Jeff Wall’s Dead Troops Talk (1992). Although the image exhibits neither the irony, the nihilism, the overflowing colorfulness nor the yelling provocation of some icons of postmodernity, it tells a thought-provoking story about postmodern image making. Besides its implications for the aesthetic field, I want to consider this story also as a reflection on epistemological and ethical aspects of artistic practice and sense production.
In 1992 Jeff Wall finishes a photographic monument: Displayed in a huge lightbox, spanning over a height of nearly two and a half meters and a length of more than four meters, it presents a snapshot of war. The title of the artwork suggests that the battle infused situation depicted is set in Moqor, Afghanistan. The events date from 1986, referring to the Soviet interventions in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.
The photograph gathers 13 more or less mortally wounded Red Army soldiers and one unharmed, probably local Afghan intruder in a barren, stony landscape. At the upper edge of the image the legs of two more people are visible, one wearing blue, the other military green wide pants. Several weapons, mostly rifles, shreds of cloths and equipment, bags, barrels, and a piece of corrugated iron are scattered around the scenery.
Although the historical framing, the lack of colors typical for battle scenes as well as the arrangement provoke an authenticity of the war scenery, a lingering doubt appears at the very start of regarding this image: namely that something is wrong.
Wall is not eager to hide that there is a mistake here. Already the title of the work reveals that this is not war photography in a somewhat artsy dress. It is not documentation, but a fictional vision of war. Even though from a certain angle it seems to be quite clear that this scenery has been staged and the war depicted is not a serious threat, the image preserves its double-edged aura. Namely, as a photograph with its reference to an actual event of war in the caption it supports the belief in the veritableness of the happenings represented. In a commonly shared attitude, it appears as a documentation of reality rather than as a construction of a new reality touching upon the reality we know. Dead Troops Talk plays with the ambiguity of neither mirroring the outer-pictorial world nor being pure fiction, since it clearly expresses to actually care about the happenings in the past.
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In order to create this ambiguous, highly reflective image Wall takes inspiration from cultural artifacts, especially canonic war paintings. Similar to other works, such as Bagpack (1992) or Tattoos and Shadows (2000), he refers to his own heritage – the Western history of art – by formally quoting well-known representations, such as (post-)impressionist depictions by the famous and influential painter Edouard Manet. Paintings are not his only point of reference. Wall is also inspired by photographic works as well as by cinema, theater, and even literature. For instance, After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (1999-2000), forms a visual impression of the opening scene of a novel (fig. 2).
Figure 2: Jeff Wall, After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue.
Photo by Colin Howley, June 13, 2006. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Image selected by Art Style Communication & Editions.
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Formally, in many cases Wall not only works with large sized formats and the backlit presentation of the final work. He also builds up his monumental photographs by assembling multiple photographic sections,22 fashioned apart from each other:
what appears to be a straightforward photograph is actually a digital montage. In Dead Troops Talk the digital montage comes down to an assemblage of groups up to four people that have been shot separately. Only afterwards, within the compounded image, these groups gather in a purposeful setting arranged by Wall and his team. Not only are the happenings staged, they are even staged in a different way than they appear in the final image, i.e. individually - the small groups apart from each other (fig. 3).
Figure 3: Detail from Dead Troops Talk by Jeff Wall. Photo by Ian Usher, Art Institute of Chicago, July 31, 2007. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Image selected by Art Style Communication & Editions.
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Creating this collage by means of photographic sections and giving it a touch of reality and wholeness, the work thematizes a paradox: It appears as a testimony of reality, yet at the same time, it exposes staging a situation that we experience as familiar, due to the common media circulation of images of war. The historical reference of the work’s title underlines this paradox, because it adds an insistence that this image relies on a certain moment in the past, which can ultimately be viewed as a document of war. Again, it clearly indicates that it cannot be a document. The very phrase “dead troops talk” hints at the contradictoriness depicted in this work. Usually dead people do not talk. Wall’s dead, however, are still talking. What we regard as normality, is silenced here. States that are accepted to exclude each other in everyday life suddenly come together.
The exhibition of paradoxical states is typical for postmodern image making, since it aims to question established orders of knowledge, sense-production as well as representation. In this case, however, it seems important to stress that the coming together of contradictory states is not arbitrary: it does not come down to a non-sensical, self-sufficient play with pictorial elements. Rather, the work shows a constructive concern introducing an alternative way of formally representing and telling a story about the events of war: Destruction, as undermining hegemonic strategies of representation and sense-production, and construction, as creating new approaches to representing and producing sense, go hand in hand. Herein, the artwork surely questions the possibility of a non-arranged, objective or neutral reality represented by an image.23 Still, it highlights that the respective pictorial reality created is of great concern and is not random. In an epistemological respect, it is clear that the photograph shows something of importance. It addresses war, even if it does not witness a true war situation. At this, it also exhibits an ethical issue. It raises the question of how we should represent as well as regard events of war in an adequate way after we had seized to believe in the transparency, neutrality, and objectivity of war photography.
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