Despite the mundanity of his name, Jeff Wall is no wallflower.

He’s just a nice art historian and artist from Vancouver with a penchant for cool ass photography. Like really cool photography, not cool photography of butts, à la Yoko Ono or Robert Mapplethorpe. 

Jeff was born in Vancouver, Canada on September 29, 1946 to two loving and supportive parents who built him a studio by the time he was  only 15 years old. He went on to study art history at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He met his wife there and by the time Wall went on to get his MA in Art History, they were married with two sons. It was only after all of this schooling and a stint teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design that Wall started making art again. He still taught at various schools, including the Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, but art became his #1 gig.

As a kid he was fascinated with painting, but his work took a turn for the photographic, something that he still thinks he may live to regret. He started making these huge photographs mounted on these lightbox thingies that would illuminate the work from behind. People were very into them – so much so that that they gave him a bunch of awards.  He’s kind of an award hog, but definitely deserves them because his photographs take an incredible amount of time and money (sometimes over $100,000!) to create. This all gets paid off when his photos sell for millions of dollars but still, it can be quite a risk. It’s also worth it because his work is incredible. Just ask musician Sia who at the 2015 Grammy Award Ceremony tried to recreate Wall’s After "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue on stage for her performance.