Canadian artist Jeff Wall is wowing the crowds with a retrospective ongoing at SF MOMA, and new work on show at the White Cube in London, and the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. And he's also inspiring the usual heated debates. Wall's innovative use of the photographic medium is both painterly, and photo-journalistic, suggesting a snap of a moment. But these are works of elaborate preparation and come out of a unique cinematic vision.
One of Wall's best-known works, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) from 1993, in the Tate Modern collection (left) is a modern riff on a classic woodblock print by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai.
To help Wall describe his proces of image-making, he came up with the phrase: "I begin by not photographing...".Hear him talk about this, and the influence of traditional painting on his work, [in the video clips here.](http://www.sfmoma.org/wall/data/content.html)
