SFX: birds chirping

NARRATOR: 

Despite the apparent informality of the scene, this photograph was in fact meticulously reconstructed from memory. Here’s photographer Jeff Wall: 

JEFF WALL: 

Tattoos and Shadows came from something I saw right near my house. It was—it was a summer afternoon, walking along; I don’t know where I was going. Next street over, three or four young people, covered with tattoos, sitting under a tree, with the light flickering through the leaves, just like you see in the picture. There’s just something really beautiful about that combination of the fixed inking, you know, of the skin, that’s never gonna go away, And then this other pattern. These two patterns laid on these people’s arms. 

It was just so photographic, such a beautiful subject. I immediately thought, That’s really good. And so probably it was the next summer by the time I got around to doing it. And I just rebuilt it, just as I had said before, with three people; I think there might’ve been four in the original, and it seemed too many. I found another tree, because the place where I photographed it wasn’t pictorially as interesting as I thought I might be able to achieve. But I didn’t take many liberties. In other words, it was a yard with a tree, almost the same situation, but just I liked that tree better, and so on.  

So it came from that real moment, and a kind of inspiration from that of just being convinced that that was a beautiful subject. So the reconstruction is a transformation that leads to something faithful.