When it comes to beauty — that mysterious quality that draws us to a work of art — acclaimed Canadian photographer Jeff Wall says it has little to do with how pretty, pleasing or polished a piece may be. In fact, he says the true notion of beauty includes things we find grotesque, repellant and even disturbing.
“The real, original use of the word ‘beauty’ in art was for the aesthetic experience of something superior, or at least of quality,” he explains in an interview with Q’s Tom Power. “It affects you physically. There’s a kind of enjoyment that you can’t explain, a certain quickening of your thought process, a kind of happiness that you get, an energization caused by the effect of this work…. So beauty is a complicated word.”
If you’re not familiar with Wall’s work, you should know that he favours staged scenes and large lightboxes over documentary-style photography. His photos have sold for millions at auctions, and he’s an Officer of the Order of Canada. Now, he’s getting ready for his first major Canadian exhibit in 25 years, Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, which opens this weekend at MOCA Toronto.
Jeff Wall, Boy falls from tree, 2010. Lightjet print. Edition 3 + 1 AP. (© and courtesy of Jeff Wall)
If you do end up at the exhibit, you don’t have to worry about doing any research beforehand. Wall doesn’t think it’s necessary or even interesting for viewers to know too much about his photos before seeing them.
“I really believe, seriously, that viewers of artworks understand them when they really experience them and do not need any backstory, don’t need any comments from the artist, don’t necessarily even need to read an article in a newspaper or art magazine,” he says. “It’s nice to do so. Those are all good things. But in fact, we don’t really need them.”
While Wall admits he pays a lot of attention to his titles, considering that to be his “real literary activity,” he doesn’t care if you remember them or not. He says it’s even better if you don’t, so you can impose your own meaning on the work.
“What I notice about my titles is many people can’t remember them,” he tells Power. “That sort of annoyed me for a little while … but then I realized that it’s better they forget them because that’s a symptom of them having made the picture for themselves, experienced it for themselves, and they can add a title, which is in a way kind of an outcropping of my idea that they are the writers.”
Wall’s new retrospective, Jeff Wall: Photographs 1984 to 2023, is on view at MOCA Toronto from Oct. 19 through March 22, 2026.
LISTEN | Jeff Wall’s full interview with Tom Power:
33:05Jeff Wall says beauty isn’t what you think it is
The full interview with Jeff Wall is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Jeff Wall produced by Vanessa Greco.