Andreas Gursky is a German photographer known for his very peculiar style with which he portrays a personal vision of the natural, artificial or human world. A postmodern and globalized world. If on the one hand his shots are very large and wide-ranging, on the other the artist demonstrates a very deep sensitivity - almost maniacal - for small details . A continuous tension between macro and micro.
« I was overwhelmed by what I saw: the complexity of image, the accumulation of goods, machines, containers. I wasn't sure the photo would work. I just felt compelled to take it. It was pure intuition. Only when I got home did I understand what I had. I immediately saw that pattern, that pictorial density, that industrial aesthetic. This image has become an important piece for me, a turning point. »
Andreas Gursky in an interview with the Guardian, referring to the photograph" Porto di Salerno "
The 1990 photograph depicting the Port of Salerno constitutes a turning point in the photographer's journey and inaugurates a reflection on concepts of repetition, of “pictorial” density, of visual patterns. This research is also encouraged by the advent of digital and the ease of post production.
99 Cent is a shot where Gursky's poetics are fully perceived. The observer's position is far away so that you have a wide panorama and a good view. The boundless space is contrasted by an expansive succession of tiny details. It feels both wrapped and disoriented in a world without hierarchy, where every element seems equally important.
Even in the shot Amazon there is an almost alienating sensation of overwhelming detail, which undoubtedly prevails over the overall vision, difficult to grasp without taking the time to make it. What should be a hectic and full of life place is, through the author's lens and through his digital manipulation, almost suspended in time. Still in its complexity. A photograph that, piece by piece like a puzzle, reveals its composite unitary identity.
At first glance this shot, Rhein II , - fun fact: this is the photograph sold at auction at the highest price in the history of the world ($ 4.3 million) - it looks different from the other. Less excited, more bare, less crowded. But the perception begins to change if the river is conceived as a living body composed of an indefinite number of very small moving particles. At this point the dynamics are the same again: repetition.
