A German photographer and professor was born in 1955 in Leipzig by the name of Andreas Gursky.
Video Credit : Southbank Centre
You might wonder why this person is phenomenal in his field of expertise. Well, it is undeniable that his educational background has obviously given him the advantage.
His methodical approach is quite obvious in his passion for larger scale photography, which was influenced by his teachers at the Dusseldorf Art Academy.
This is also where he received his training from a photographic team known for their distinctive and dispassionate method of systematically cataloging architecture and industrial machinery.
Gursky’s work was also influenced by British landscape photographer John Davies particularly on his detailed high vantage point images.
Arguably, it had a strong impact on the street level photographs of Gursky.
Style
Gursky was at first independent when it comes to enhancing images until the 1990s where he became reliant on computers to enhance or edit pictures.
This has helped him get the advantage of making an art of spaces even bigger than the photographed subjects.
Basically, the perspective of Gursky can be seen from an elevated vantage point in many of his photographs.
This is said to be useful for the viewer to encounter scenes that encompass both center and periphery, which are mainly beyond reach.
Gursky is also attracted to large, anonymous, manmade spaces, such as office lobbies, high-rise facades, interiors of big box retailers, stock exchanges, and the like.
His style is nonetheless deadpan and enigmatic, wherein there is little to no explanation needed to his works. His photography is indeed straightforward.
Gursky’s Exhibitions
Video Credit: The Art Channel
- In 1985, it was in Germany where Gursky first exhibited his work.
- In 1988, his first solo gallery show took center stage at the Galerie Johnen and Schottle in Cologne.
- In 1988, his first one-person museum exhibition was held in the U.S. at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
- In 2001, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has made the work of Gursky a subject of a retrospective.
- In 1989 and 1995, international exhibits included his works particularly in the Internationale Foto-Triennale in Esslingen.
- In 1990 and 2004, his exhibits went international at the Venice Biennale.
- In 1996 and 2000, the Biennale of Sydney has also exhibited his work.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Hayward Gallery, the work of acclaimed German photographer Andreas Gursky was included in the first major UK retrospective in 2018.
Several other notable exhibits were also presented all around the world to honor the extraordinary achievements of Andreas Gursky.
Awards
On November 26, 2018, the astonishing photographer Andreas Gursky was awarded with the Grosser Kulturpreis der Sparkassen-Kulturstifung Rheinland.
Gursky also received several awards over the course of his career. These include the 1988 Forderpreis des Landes Nordrhei-Westfalen fur junge Kunstler.
He also received the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize in 1998.
Likewise, he gained the Infinity Award for Art from the International Center of Photography in New York in 2001. Currently, he is a professor for Liberal Arts at the Art Academy in Dusseldorf in Germany.