A Picture’s Gesture: Regarding Jeff Wall’s “Gestus” (original) (raw)

The essay offers an interpretation of Jeff Wall's "Gestus," a statement on the place and significance of gesture in photography. Analyzing Wall's conception of "micro-gestures," I explain how, for Wall, this conception is tied to a wider critical concern with the relationship between subjectivity and the social in the modern age. Gesture, I argue, is a prism that allows Wall to explore the dialectics of the appearance of the subject within the public sphere, while resisting common binarisms. Furthermore, I show that it offers Wall an analogy for articulating the manner in which pictures address the viewer's eye.