The first substantial monograph of Andreas Gursky’s work since 1984 this series of large-format color photographs depicts vast panoramic scenes: entire cityscapes, endless horizons, multi-floored office buildings, huge factory corridors and crowded public spaces. Taken from a distance, often with a bird’s eye view, they represent more than a set of photographs of various locations—rather Gursky’s work reflects both the art forms and the everyday aesthetics of 20th-century society. Many photographs are allegories, offering a cultural critique of man’s role in nature, technology, art and society. Other resemble abstract paintings, in which Gursky applies a number of formal elements, such as light, composition and form, to convey a mood or subtle message. In their size and scope, in their reflective mood and social commentary, and in their many layers of meaning and interpretation, these exquisitely reproduced portraits of interior and exterior spaces display the qua! lities that have made Andreas Gursky one of the most respected landscape photographers of his generation.
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MOMA exhibit,
By scott oliphant (austin, tx United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Andreas Gursky: Photographs from 1984 to the Present (Hardcover)
I saw this exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in NY recently and it was incredible. I'm usually not a fan of giant color photo exhibits, but this one really struck me. The complexity and beauty in his photographs will hit on something that you have most likely never seen. He has a gift of bringing common scenes like the supermarket into view in a way that makes you doubt you have ever shopped at one. If so, you would say, how did I miss that which is shown in this photograph? Looking at his photographs will bring on that same sense of smallness as pondering your little place on this little, common blue/green planet, around this one star that is the norm among billions upon billions.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exploring The Limits Of Photographic Representationalism,
By
This review is from: Andreas Gursky: Photographs from 1984 to the Present (Hardcover)
Andreas Gursky: Photographs From 1984 To The Present offers a grand, hugely diverse collection of larger than life images which taken as a whole conveys a gently ironic commentary of modernity in all its disparate manifestations. Although profoundly concerned with the role (and fate!) of man in the dis-articulated social tableau created by late-stage hyper-capitalism, Gursky is not making judgments about what he observes. To Quote from one of three introductory essays, this one written by Marie Luise Syring, "Gursky's work...reflects both the art forms and the everyday aesthetics of 20th-century society without resorting to open polemics-his images display too much indifference and beauty." I was initially drawn to this series of photographs by the dust jacket illustration which is a somewhat unusual composition for Gursky, it turns out. I was touched immediately by the sparse, geometrically pleasing landscape running on endlessly in a striated banner of perfectly matched colour. There are several other 'naturalistic' studies included in this portfolio of 76 plates but most of the work examines the controlled chaos of urban settings, often featuring countless humans perambulating pointlessly in endless motion. "Being modern can also involve the danger of losing one's individuality and right to self-determination," Marie Luise Syring reminds us. Gursky works on the boundary between painting and art photography. He tests and retests the critical distinctions seemingly inherent to these two representational domains. Thus many, but not all, of Gursky's photographs seem to have an explicitly clinical orientation. He is probing a fragile boundary and we know it. The cold truth which emanates from a stark objectification of the subject matter which compels Gursky is however always balanced by the way in which he floods his overrun visual fields with light and riotous colour. That I might personally prefer the warmer emotional tones of his naturalistic work to the harsher elements of the cityscapes is of course hardly the point. All of his work makes you think! And sometimes gasp at the sheer excess of talent and technique which propels the creation of such intensely intelligent, beautiful art.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
book is very damaged,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Andreas Gursky: Photographs from 1984 to the Present (Hardcover)
this book was badly used and damaged and was listed as new. There are stains all over the inside pages.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
