Værker

Building
“If we photograph a building, the building stands on the ground. It’s not cut off. It’s a very conventional perspective but this—you can look at all my pictures—this is what we learned and what we think. It’s very important. If you would cut the picture, then it’s abstract [and closed off]. This way it looks more normal. You can find your own way into the picture.”

 

Space
“Space is very important for me but in a more abstract way, I think,” Gursky says. “Maybe to try to understand not just that we are living in a certain building or in a certain location, but to become aware that we are living on a planet that is going at enormous speed through the universe. For me it’s more a synonym. I read a picture not for what’s really going on there, I read it more for what is going on in our world generally.”

 

Medthod
“Normally, the way I work is that I’m doing research in the media, I find my location, do further research and then I’m asking for permissions. Then I travel to this place and I’m doing my work. I think I’m a very slow worker, so I focus on one picture and the background of the original idea for why I choose this location or this space is always a reference to a picture that I did before, but then I change the content a bit.”

 

 

The Developement
‘Well, if I am installing an exhibition I don’t just choose the strongest works, it’s also about which works sit together best. But you will see that some older pictures always appear in the big exhibitions: like the early landscapes, the Klausen Pass, and the cable car in the Dolomites. For me these are very important pictures and I think they will stay that way - they are good enough to exhibit even after twenty or more years.’
‘Now I think about photographs. The last photograph in the show is influenced by a club that is run by a friend of mine. And although it’s a picture of me…in a way it’s no longer a photograph. I am photographed, and a young person and some of the details are photographed too. But the whole space is completely artificial - it’s calculated with an architectural software programme; it’s not photographed. So yes, it is a long way indeed from the early pictures.’

 

 

 

 

The Future
“Right now I am building a huge storage area underground for my work and it has taken nearly two years for the construction. Because it’s still not working, because we don’t have the temperature and humidity we want, I got the idea to use it as a photograph. So I’m working on a photograph in my storage in the last weeks and I think this will also be a very personal picture.