Andreas Gursky is a German photographer best known for his massive architectural and perspective photographs. He uses extremely wide, panoramic-like angles to create an overwhelming sense of presence and space. He generally shoots subjects that bear some sort of repetition – people, windows, foodstuffs, you name it – and exploits their undiscovered beauty.
Andreas Gursky also holds the record for the worlds most expensive photograph ever sold. His 99 Cent II Diptych – sized at 207cm by 337cm – sold three prints, each over $2,000,000. The highest one topping out at an astonishing and record breaking $3,340,456.
Visually, Gursky is drawn to large, anonymous, man-made spaces—high-rise facades at night, office lobbies, stock exchanges, the interiors of big box retailers (See his print 99 Cent II Diptychon). In a 2001 retrospective, New York’s Museum of Modern Art called the artist’s work, “a sophisticated art of unembellished observation. It is thanks to the artfulness of Gursky’s fictions that we recognize his world as our own.” Gursky’s style is enigmatic and deadpan. There is little to no explanation or manipulation on the works. His photography is straightforward.
99 Cents (I) (1999)
Andreas Gursky and The Contemporary Sublime [nice article in americansuburbx.com]
In place of nature we find the invasive landmarks of a global economy Taken as a whole, Gursky’s work constitutes a map of the postmodern civilized world.
The vision is not a comforting one. Many of Gursky’s pictures, though beautiful, intensely colorful, and wonderfully composed, leave the viewer with an uneasy feeling. Whether because of the spread of architectures or the bustling crowds they show, or because of the equalizing aesthetic treatment given to all subjects, from the Dolomite Mountains to a car show in France, the pictures are both awe-inspiring and disturbing.
Shanghai (2000)