Most of them are oddly charged, dramatically staged images meant to evoke dreams, nightmares, or fantasies. Many of the best-known photos from a series with children, published in 1972 as "The Dream Collector," could be frames from a David Lynch film. Much of the subsequent work Tress made was similarly theatrical but tended to involve homoerotic scenes. In one picture, a slim teen-ager reaches over tentatively, tenderly, to peel a bandage off another boy's bare thigh, a moment both touching and wonderfully matter-of-fact.
Throughout his long career in photography, Jeff Wall has never been interested in capturing Henri Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment." For more than four decades, the renowned Vancouver-based artist has treated the camera not as a tool for recording reality, but as a medium for playfully constructing it. But his body of work feels especially relevant - if a tad politically disengaged - right now, as we navigate AI-generated images, deepfakes, and questions about photographic reliability.