Sunday 10/19 Entry

Andreas Gursky

With Gursky, vantage point is everything. He manages to take the normal and mundane aspects of everyday life and make them overwhelmingly chaotic. It becomes as if they are no longer real buildings and people. The people in Gursky's photographs are so small that they are no longer identifiable, despite the photograph itself being blown up to a very large format.

The repetition in the photographs adds to the chaos of the piece. So much is going on that becomes hard to focus, and you're forced to view the entire thing as some sort of pattern. When you do manage to zero in on a specific aspect of the photo, you're left wondering why those people are there and why what is happening is happening. From the vantage point of one of the people in Gursky's photographs, you wouldn't be able to tell that so much was going on around you, but thanks to Gursky, we now know.

Gursky has exhibited at MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and White Cube in London.

http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/moving_pictures/highlights_7a.html
http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/31785/
http://www.whitecube.com/artists/gursky/
http://www.artnet.com/artist/7580/andreas-gursky.html
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2001/gursky/