Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky (born 1955) is one of the world’s leading contemporary international artists. In essence, his photographs are concerned with the experience of life in a globalised world. Through a combination of enormous scale; the most precise pin-sharp detail; and bold use of colour, he systematically represents the individuals place within our complex, fast-paced consumer society. As Flash Art (2007) noted, Gursky scours global locations for scenes that explore ‘thematic dichotomies of macro and micro; individual and mass; photographic documentation and abstract formalism.’

Gursky has photographed quintessentially modern scenes – shops, stock markets, apartment buildings, leisure centres, and tourist sites – showing the world as high-tech, fast-paced, expensive, commercialised and overpopulated. Far more than a depressing spectacle of consumerism and globalisation, the sheer beauty and scale of Gursky’s photographs is highly seductive. Ultimately his extraordinary images are a visceral experience that makes us profoundly consider our own place within this world.