Just Washed, 1997

'In all photographs something has to be present in front of the camera for a brief instant. There are any number of routes for that something to get there. Those different routes have different names - "street photography", "costume portrait", "architectural view," and so on - but they are all going to the same place, to the making of a photograph. I like to work in different ways, and I believe that cinematography and documentary are two fundamental ways, ways that include almost everything imaginable as photography, every genre, every technique, and so on. They are different, but they are akin, and the differences between them are less significant than their kinship. I believed this twenty-five years ago, but I did not express myself as I do now. (Wall, Jeff Wall, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007, pp. 155-156)