Andreas Gursky
Leipzig (Germany), 1955

Son of Willy Gursky, a well-known industrial photographer, Andreas grew up in Düsseldorf learning the tricks of the trade before graduating from secondary school. During the late seventies (1977-1979) he attended the Folwangschule in Essen, where Otto Steiner, after the raising of the Berlin Wall in 1961, had established an important educational centre for professional West German photographers, especially in the fields of photojournalism and graphic design. Also in Essen, Gursky came into contact with the documentary tradition of German photography -August Sander- characterised by a certain degree of improvisation and a formal composition not in keeping with the aesthetic dictates of commercial photography. He continued his studies at the Staatliche Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf (1980-1987) where he opted for the independent study programme Freie Kunst and became a student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Along with that of other classmates at this school -Candida Höfer, Tata Ronkholz, Thomas Ruff and Petra Wunderlich-, Gursky’s work began to receive international recognition in the decade of the eighties, as it belonged to the so-called New School of German Photography, whose basic feature was an aseptic approach to the representation of contemporary society. Since then his work has been exhibited in myriad European and U.S. venues, most noteworthy of which were his one person exhibitions at the SF MoMA in 2003, the Georges Pompidou centre of Paris in 2002 and the MoMA New York in 2001. His photographs currently win heretofore unheard of prices for photography and his works are often sold in auction houses all over the world; Paris, Montparnasse, 1993, holds the record for the most expensive photograph ever sold. Throughout his career, Gursky has managed to channel all his varied formative influences into an attractive body of work, first produced mainly in Düsseldorf and later expanded upon throughout his extended travels to Cairo, New York, Brasilia, Tokyo, Stockholm, Chicago, Athens, Singapore, Paris and Los Angeles, among other places. His photographs, in large-scale formats and saturated with colour and detail, often depict places of human exchange linked to the society of advanced capitalism, public spaces such as airports, stations, discotheques, stock exchanges, parliaments, industrial plants, offices, hotels, supermarkets and swimming pools, in addition to places where the human element constitutes merely an anecdotal trace. Gursky thus postulates a reflection on our civilisation, as he is particularly intrigued by the dialectic between things individual and collective, the dialogue with the history of art, and capturing the essence of modernity. A. S.

Hong Kong Port, 1994

Andreas Gursky often takes his trips with specific images for his works already in mind. Once he has arrived at his destination, the artist concentrates on one or several photographs until he obtains the desired image, not hesitating to resort to digital imaging to achieve it. Toward 1989, Gursky began to process his photographs digitally. This technique has allowed him to portray the places with utmost sharpness. During the nineties, he concurrently embarked on a new era in his career by entering into an ever closer relationship with painting. The idea was clear, to practice an open emulation of certain forms of recent painting and sculpture. In this way, in 1993, Gursky portrayed an enormous office building (Paris, Montparnasse). The result is a pictorial view halfway between realism and abstraction, and reminiscent of Richter’s 256 Farben.
Hong Kong Port is a picture of the busiest port in Asia: a place representing change, a symbol of the progress and modernity of Asian culture. Taken from a highly slanted angle that allows for the vision of the immense skyscrapers outlining the coast as well as the blurred maritime horizon, it is one of the images from the series Gursky produced in the former British colony. For this series, the artist seems to have focused on many of his recurring themes: the buildings in the foreground illustrate his will to portray the “new human landscapes” with exactitude. At the same time, the imprecision of the distant horizon is reminiscent of images such as Seibahn, Dolomiten, from 1987, Niagara Falls from 1989 and Ohne Titel I, II and III from 1993, in which Gursky established a direct relationship with painting forms.
Gursky’s enormous photographs recreate a multitude of details, resembling those of some of the Flemish masters (Van Eyck and Vermeer). The spectator is thus submerged in a universe that is disturbing and yet also attractive and suggestive. This methodical and self-absorbed contemplation of reality leads to a perception of each element with a concretion unlike that provided by our ordinary unfocused sight, and it brings to mind certain categories of the sublime, where individuals experience the vertigo underlying their existence before the impact of natural phenomena. Gursky adapts this category to contemporary processes and he also seems to discover that abyss in the social, natural and urban landscape created by man. A. S.