The cinematic oeuvre of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall is being celebrated in a new retrospective opening this weekend at New York's prestigious Museum of Modern Art.

An exhibition featuring 40 of Wall's large-format "lightbox" photos from the late 1970s to the present will open at the popular Manhattan contemporary art museum Sunday.

A new MoMa retrospective of Vancouver photographer Jeff Wall's images opens in New York on Sunday. (CBC)

"It's very satisfying to see my pictures brought together, displayed properly, selected nicely," Wall told CBC News from the New York museum on Friday.

"When I look at my work, I usually just see problems. I'm usually looking at it critically, as I always do. Sometimes that's pleasant, sometimes that's not so pleasant. In this case, it's quite OK because works have been pretty carefully selected. Everything I see here is as I'd like it to be."

Born in Vancouver in 1946, Wall began creating art in his teens. A former art history professor, he eventually embarked on a career as an art photographer.

In the late 1970s, Wall began creating the large-format, film-like images for which he has become renowned: detailed, carefully composed scenes he captures on transparency film, which he then mounts on lightboxes that light the images from behind.

His work often deals with political or social themes and is inspired by classical, historical artists. Wall's images are held in collections around the world.

Over the past three decades, Wall's approach and relationship to his photography has changed.

"When I started in the 70s, I needed to find a way to work against a lot of the values that I saw as being dominant in what we could call art photography. And I did that for a long time, I worked against them, trying to bring other aspects and other energies into it," he said.

"After a certain point of doing that, I realized at least for myself, I had gone as far as I could go in that direction. I began to become much more interested in the values — the photographic values, the esthetic values in photography — that I previously had to contest."

In the past 15 years, he said, "I turned more towards photography after beginning by pulling away from photography. I think that will show in the exhibition."

MoMa's Jeff Wall exhibit continues through May 14, after which it will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.