Andreas Gursky
I couldn't find anything that I enjoyed or that resonated from the list of artists, apart from Andreas Gursky. Once I had clicked into a couple of his photos I was hooked. The scale, the detail, the point of view, the composition, the format, literally everything oozed style. It's inspired!
Fascinated by the scale of the photos, I was interested to learn how it was possible to capture such imagery. They appear seamless, natural, and convincing as one image shot from a camera, yet with there being no distortion at all. When considering panoramic photos, especially those taken on your phone, you often find that there is some level of distortion to the image. They warp at the edges, or depending on the perspective, can experience exaggerated distortion. I sometimes find it interesting to use panoramic for portrait format photos rather than landscape. Taking the level at which you stand, and then panning the camera up, giving an incredibly towering picture that I think can lends itself to describing literal scale of buildings of objects from your POV. Here is an example of a photo I had taken from the time Yayoi Kusama had towered over the streets in London.
After watching several videos about Gursky's works, one recurring point was the impossibility of seeing his works in their entirety. When looking at the simple phone image above, it's evident that due to its scale, you can't view it all clearly at once. Your eye moves across the image, absorbing parts as you go. If you focus on one area, the edges become blurred in your vision. It's incredible to see his photos, albeit on screen at a much smaller scale, and still find it hard to take it all in. They are sharp all the way to the edge, detailed in every part with only the slight blur if the subject is in motion. Achieving this is only possible by stitching images together, which I quickly learned is the case.
While studying Gursky's work, I discovered that he is known for using large format cameras, such as the Linhof Technorama 617 and the Arca-Swiss 4x5. Although Gursky is recognised for digitally altering his images during post-production, he still captures his works on film.
"Recently, I’ve been working with unsharpness. I was on a road trip with my wife, driving to Utah. Like any tourist, I was impressed by the landscape. One day I took pictures with my iPhone as we drove. I liked them. When we arrived at the hotel , I said to my wife: “OK, tomorrow you drive and I’ll try to get similar images at a higher resolution with my professional equipment.” The resulting image – of a flat, dry landscape with mountains in the distance – is mostly out of focus, though the resolution is high. It has a completely different perspective to my earlier works, which are sharp throughout."
Gursky chooses to focus on the man-made, with a particular interest in globalisation and capitalism.
"All my landscapes are manmade. My interest lies in people, civilisation, human presence and activity."
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