Andreas Gursky, 'Bahrain I', 2005, 306 x 221.5 cm, C-Print

Andreas Gursky´s motifs are photographed using both analog and digital methods. Employing the many shots taken this way, the final image is composed using digital technology. Andreas Gursky's works, therefore, are not classical documentary photographs that attempt to portray objects with the greatest possible likeness by making use of the medium, but, rather, are fictions based on facts.

Andreas Gursky, '99 Cent', 1999, Chromogenic color print, 6 ' 9 1/2" x 11' (207 x 337 cm).

Two weeks after breaking the record for the world's most expensive photograph at Sotheby's ('99 Cent II', a photographic diptych of an American supermarket sold for £1,700,000) Gursky opened his first museum show in Germany for nine years and the largest exhibition of his work to date. One of the first photographers to make large-scale pictures, Gursky has gone a stage further for this show by enlarging his images still further - the largest now measure almost 2 metres by 5 metres.

The photographs are often taken from a slightly elevated perspective. This vantage point displays the local contexts as entities that are often unusual to the viewer. Sometimes the artist presents his motifs simultaneously from above and at an angle or from above and from below, thereby creating an artificial, privileged perspective, which allows the viewer to float weightlessly above the subject matter, enabling him to view the objects from an idealized perception that he is normally denied. In this way the artist implies an availability and accessibility that does not, in fact, exist in reality. The unusual popularity of Andreas Gursky's works is based in part on this type of accessibility.

continue reading at Saatchi´s blog
where you can also find an essay by Thomas Weski, Chief Curator at Haus der Kunst, who is responsible for the show.




Andreas Gursky, 'Pyongyang I', 2007, 307 x 215.5 cm, C-Print


The exhibition is on at the Haus der Kunst until 13 May. It will then travel to Istanbul Modern and Sharjah Art Museum.

all pics courtesy Monika Sprüth / Philomene Magers

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