Layali Alkathiri: 28 Nov 2010

Andreas Gursky

He was born in Leipzig in 1955, but he grew up in Dusseldorf, the son of a commercial photographer , and influence from his teachers Hilla And Bernd Becher a photographic team known for their distinctive, dispassionate method of systematically cataloging industrial machinery and architecture. similar approach may be found in Gursky's methodical approach to his own, larger-scale photography. Other notable influences are the British landscape photographer John Davies .

Before the 1990s, Gursky did not digitally manipulate his images. In the years since, Gursky has been frank about his reliance on computers to edit and enhance his pictures, creating an art of spaces larger than the subjects photographed. Writing in the new yourk magazine magazine, the critic Peter Schjeldahl these pictures "vast," "splashy," "entertaining," and "literally unbelievable." In the same publication, critic Calvin Tomkins described Gursky as one of the "two masters" of the "Düsseldorf" school. In 2001, Tomkins described the experience of confronting one of Gursky's large works.

Gursky's huge, panoramic color prints—some of them up to six feet high by ten feet long—had the presence, the formal power, and in several cases the majestic aura of nineteenth-century landscape paintings, without losing any of their meticulously detailed immediacy as photographs. Their subject matter was the contemporary world, seen dispassionately and from a distance.

Gursky holds the record for highest price paid at auction for a single photographic image. His print 99 Cent II, Diptych, sold for GBP 1.7 million (USD $3.3 million) at Sotheby's London

full range of Gursky's photographic educations has figured in his mature work, enabling him to outgrow all three of them. His photographs—big, bold, rich in color and detail—constitute one of the most original achievements of the past decade and, for all the panache of his signature style, one of the most complex.

Gursky expanded his scope of operations from Düsseldorf and its environs to an international itinerary that has taken him to Hong Kong, Cairo, New York, Brasília, Tokyo, Stockholm, Chicago, Athens, Singapore, Paris, and Los Angeles, among other places.

Since 1987, Gursky has tended to shoot with a 4-by-5-inch or 5-by-7-inch view camera in the interests of clarity of focus and sharpness of detail. While he is known for his large images, one of the earliest works in the exhibition, the 1984 alpine landscape Klausenpass, is a relatively modest 36 by 32 inches or so, framed.(2) As Galassi relates the story of its making, Gursky, while traveling, had set aside his view camera for a more portable medium-format camera (producing a negative of 2 1/2 by 2 3/4 inches) that would still accommodate his interest in detail.
Since 2002 Gursky has occupied a studio and living space realized by the architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron within a former power station in Dusseldorf.

Quick Facts

Gursky received a strong influence from his teachers, Hilla and Bernd Becher.
Before the mid 1990s, Gursky did not digitally manipulate his images. Today, however Gursky uses computers to edit his pictures and creates art in a larger space than the subject photographed.
Is a German photographer known for the highly textured feel of his enormous photographs often using a high point of view.