http://www.objektiv.no/realises/2015/3/11/six-questions-for-jeff-wall
Foto: Gerda Meier-Grolman
“People do say things like: ‘It’s impossible to make images today because everything has been done’, but it hasn’t been done by them. There’s always a new person who’ll come and do it again, and therefore that thought is one that can come to you at a certain point in your life when you feel that you haven’t accomplished anything of yourself yet and those who have, have sort of closed the door on you. I remember when I was beginning I felt that Robert Frank had closed a door on me, because I really couldn’t imagine making a photobook like that, as I said before, but another door opened at the same time. Circumstances are always like that. Things are constantly evolving and in art there are no rules, because art can be anything. There are no rules, and not everything has been done. Every new generation will encounter the problems of the previous generations from a different place and they won’t be able to replicate what that generation has done. For example, my view of the photobook is probably now completely obsolete; my attitude won’t take a young person anywhere comparable to where it took me in the 1970s. I don’t believe there are any worn-out art forms; there isn’t any art medium that isn’t available. But I do think that for individuals certain things will be blocked in your youth, and that blocked space is usually something you desperately identify with and admire, and so it becomes an obstacle and that’s the great crisis that everyone faces: that the thing they want to do has already happened. So therefore they’re forced to become themselves again in another way. Many are defeated by that crisis – they can’t find their own thing. You have to face that obstacle; it’s unavoidable. It’s an illusion that all has been done – things are still happening. All you can do is to find your own relation to that obstacle. “