Monday Muse: Andreas Gursky

A few weeks ago I watched the new Noah Baumbach film, White Noise. I wasn’t a massive fan of the movie since I’m not a big Baumbach fan, but I really liked the LCD Soundsystem song, New Body Rhumba, they chose for the movie's final scenes and credits. Some of the film takes place in a grocery store, including the final dance sequence to the LCD song at the end. When introducing the grocery store setting, the film shows the interior of the store from a high, wide-angle vantage point. I immediately grokked the shot as a reference to 99 Cent, a photograph of the interior of a Sunset Boulevard 99 Cents Only Store, shot by renowned photographer Andreas Gursky.

Ever since the movie reminded me of Gursky’s work, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Gursky is a German photographer who rose to prominence in the ‘90s by capturing the emerging, globalized zeitgeist in overwhelming detail. His photos are known for being shot from a high vantage point using a wide-angle lens that lets the viewer experience the center and periphery of the shot simultaneously, which isn’t usually possible. 99 Cent in particular is arresting because of the sheer abundance of choice within the store. Aisles upon aisles of neatly lined up products that seem to blur into bands of color and abstractify as they are reflected off of the ceiling. At first, it’s not clear what you are looking at until you begin to see the heads of the shoppers partaking in our favorite pastime, consumption.

Gursky claims that his photographs have an absence of narrative and are neither critical or apologetic toward the subject matter. He captures the key themes that dominate our lives today including commerce and finance. The visceral reaction I have to them comes form the uncompromised vantage point that Gursky is able to achieve in his work. Particularly disturbing to me are the photographs Amazon (2016) and Chicago Board of Trade II (1999).

To me, there is something diabolical about these scenes that makes me feel fascinated and disgusted at the same time. The dwarfed people in the orgiastic stock exchange photo, surrounded by detritus, rendered in lewd color are reminiscent of bacterial colonies multiplying. In Amazon, the sheer volume of products overwhelms the scene while we are commanded to “Work Hard”, “Have Fun”, and “Make History”. Both show factors of life that we are not privy to, that we take for granted in the name of ease, convenience, and lubricated consumption.

Gursky is one of the most commercially successful photographers of all time, with prints of his photos selling for millions of dollars. The stock exchange photos are proudly displayed on the floors of financial institutions around the world. It does make me wonder what we see value in in these works. Is it a hellish landscape of our modern, globalized economy where human connection and the value of a life is insignificant and anonymous? Or is it a celebration of the huge feats of modern man, on par with any wonder of the ancient world? What I like about Gursky is he leaves it up to you to decide.