“The Destroyed Room” by Jeff Wall is a photograph that is an act of construction rather than an act of observation. He modeled the picture of Delacroix’s “The Death of Sardanapalus”. Instead of using the photograph to capture a moment in time, Wall captures what seems like many moments in time. The nature of photography does not allow him to produce moving pictures, but with this construction the viewer has a sense of action. This destroyed room was not meant to be seen as a normal room, like the viewer is watching a sitcom and looking into a house in which one wall is taken out and the action is unravelling in front of his eyes though. It is supposed to be a known construction, as Wall shows as through the door on the left side. By doing this he is showing the power of the photographer to create a dialectic, just like a painter. The dialectic he creates is the stillness of normal photography versus the movement that is created by allowing the viewer to see into the process of the picture, as if he was there creating this set with Wall. Wall pushes the boundaries of photography with this, and it can also be seen as somewhat of a “call to arms” to other photographers to push the limits even further; to not just see photography as the capturing of a moment, but the creation of art.
