The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)

[manfrominternet]

I'm fascinated with Andreas Gursky's work, so much so that I've collected nearly every one of his monographs and watched two documentaries on him several times. He's one of the reasons why I picked up LF photography, if not photography itself.

But, for the life of me, I can't figure out what he's shooting with nowadays. Now I know many people will say "who cares what he shoots with?" But I actually do care. I would love to know what his technique is nowadays, and how it evolved from what it was, say, a decade prior.

As far as I can tell, Gursky uses a Linhof Master Technika, as seen in an article about him doing his 2007 North Korea shots, and a Linhof Technikardan 45s, as seen in the 2009 documentary about him entitled "Long Shot Close Up," as his main LF cameras. He also used a Hasselblad H3DII body with a Phase One P45+ back. In said documentary, you actually see him going through the process of making one of his works, first using a point-and-shoot Leica digital camera to photograph a particular area in general (in this case a gigantic labyrinth where miners store their clothes), then come back later with his Linhof Technikardan 45s with a digital Phase One P45+ back for a "test shoot" of what he actually wants to photograph, then finally come back again with the Linhof Technikardan 45s and the real deal 4x5 Fuji 100 ASA film for the final actual photographic material, photographing a particular area and several more so that he has enough material to edit his final artwork. He then drumscans the processed Fuji transparancied and uses a photo editor to edit and complete his photograph.

But this was now 10 years ago and things have changed.

I know Gursky did love and certainly preferred film, but with the advances in digital imaging, I don't know if that's still the case.

Does anyone here have any insight to what camera and/or techniques he may now be using? He certainly has access to the best of the best, but I still think he shoots in film. Digital still just doesn't look very good. (Look at Edward Burtynsky's latest work, "Anthropocene," and Gregory Credson's work "Cathedral of the Pines." Both were shot with the latest best digital equipment and both look horrible, especially in comparison to their earlier work shot with film.)

Believe it or not, I was crazy enough to email his studio only to be told by his assistant that he's on sabbatical leave from the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie (where he's a professor) and won't be able to answer any questions I had. :/

So what do you guys know?

[manfrominternet]

Anyone? No takers?

[Chester McCheeserton]

If you've watched that video and read the article on N Korea my guess is that you know more about his technique than anyone on this forum. His show at Gagosian in LA (nearly 10 years ago) consisted of satellite pictures of the oceans. I know Struth still shoots 8x10 for certain things and I would guess Gursky does also. They probably both do both.

But if you think digital still just doesn't look good, I'd suggest having another look. Check out Christopher Williams' close up pictures of hands handling cameras like the one on the cover of Aperture in 2013. Or Stan Douglas's project 'Midcentury Studio'. Medium format digital can look really really good.

Burtynsky and Crewdson are more heralded then any of us forum readers ever will be, but are considered second tier by the Art world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC2AyMVPLh4 Check out this video from 3:20 – 3:55 for great advice on the importance of which camera you use....

[Greg]

Harry Casimor deRham once wrote me (in longhand) back on January 29, 1981: "try to develop an attitude of tolerance and cheerfulness, and to remember the ironic fact that the perfection which can be drawn from the within the depths of the human being can never be found in a machine."

[manfrominternet]

If you've watched that video and read the article on N Korea my guess is that you know more about his technique than anyone on this forum. His show at Gagosian in LA (nearly 10 years ago) consisted of satellite pictures of the oceans. I know Struth still shoots 8x10 for certain things and I would guess Gursky does also. They probably both do both.

But if you think digital still just doesn't look good, I'd suggest having another look. Check out Christopher Williams' close up pictures of hands handling cameras like the one on the cover of Aperture in 2013. Or Stan Douglas's project 'Midcentury Studio'. Medium format digital can look really really good.

Burtynsky and Crewdson are more heralded then any of us forum readers ever will be, but are considered second tier by the Art world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC2AyMVPLh4 Check out this video from 3:20 – 3:55 for great advice on the importance of which camera you use....

I really enjoyed that YouTube clip of Moriyami and Araki. Despite what one, understandably, may have inferred from what I wrote, I do actually feel the same way - the camera doesn't really matter. But I guess it also depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If I'm trying to make a large 7' x 5' photograph that's highly detailed with everything in focus, I obviously wouldn't want to use an iPhone, even though the iPhone has a good camera system. In matters of scale, the type of camera you use comes more into play. If I'm making small prints, then indeed, the camera doesn't so much matter. My question is out of geeky curiosity. I think that Gursky may actually also shoot with an Alpa/Phase One/Rodenstock combo. (I think I saw a photo of him sporting this setup somewhere, but I don't know if that's his dominant camera/setup.) Anyway, this is Gursky's work from 2016 entitled "Ibiza." It looks like it was shot 4x5, but I could be wrong: http://m.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/ibiza/zoom:1

Digital can absolutely look good, but it lacks the grain and dreaminess of film. It lacks something I can't even put into words. Of course you can mimick the look via photoshop, but I suppose many people wouldn't bother because many prefer that hyper-real look of digital. My Sony a7R III takes phenomanal photographs, but it doesn't hold a candle to a well-shot 4x5 image. Crewdson's "Cathedral of the Pines" simply doesn't look as good as "Beneath the Roses," and I don't think that it's due to what was shot, but rather how it was shot. Once Crewdson went digital, his work really suffered, at least in my eyes. Digital has too much of a hyper-real plastic look that doesn't lend itself well to the cinematic look that defines Crewdson's work. This is all, of course, a subjective personal preference. Some, if not most, prefer the look of digital. Nothing wrong with that.

Is it really true that Crewdson is considered second tier by the art world?

Anyway, Gursky is definitely open to shooting digital. I'm just curious to know if a digital setup is what he's using as his dominant camera/mode of production.

[Chester McCheeserton]

Have you seen those iphone billboards? They look pretty good....But kidding sort of. Yes I'd agree that if you want to make a print that size especially if it's landscape picture with sky, or lots of subtle detail then 8x10 negative is still king...I had never seen the 'ibiza' picture it's nice, seems like a return to his early style...does it matter what camera was used if it's a compelling picture? if i had to guess it looks more like digital that's been cropped to 4x5 aspect ratio and grain added, something about the highlights and grain seems too smooth and sharp for film...but I could very well be wrong.

I didn't see those particular Crewdson prints in person but I think the differences have gotten much subtler and that few people care how it originated...I've done some tests of the exact same picture with the a7r3 and 5x7 and I think the digital can more than hold a candle...but of course you're right it will always look a little different. A friend compared it to using a tube amp vs a solid state amp. both have unique qualities.

Yea, I think Crewdson is considered 2nd tier to Jeff Wall, even if they now show at the same gallery. Crewdson has the technical chops but his idea is much indebted to Wall's earlier work, and Crewdson makes kind of a watered down version of what Wall did much earlier and more complexly - Crewdson references Spielberg and American TV angst while Wall is in dialog much more deeply with nuanced and ambitious issues within the history of representation, filmmakers like Fassbinder, and lesser known figures in the history of photo like Wols. The collector's who buy the Crewdsons can't afford the Walls. Crewdson's work looks like illustrations for a really good HBO series, but Wall's best pictures are weirder and have multiple layers of reference.

also many more reputable institutions and critics/historians have backed or written on Wall then Crewdson...but then Wall still shoots film so maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot here...

[Drew Wiley]

Some of the better known early works were stitched together from 5x7 film then heavily PS altered. I suspect that much of the initial pioneering impact of this kind of methodology will wear thin as it increasingly becomes routine and passe. I happen to like the rather unique compositional strategies of both Gursky and Burtynsky, but scratch my head at the kinds of prices being paid for a fugitive medium. It's even more ironic when very expensive currently trendy "paintings" involve cheap art store tissue papers glued on with $1.99 tubes of acrylic caulking. At least that will leave curators and conservators the option to flush the whole fragile thing if they don't wish to store it. But I suppose spending obscenely large amounts of high-brow money on art is no worse than the billions of dollars a year of low-brow money being spent on meth. A passing high.

[Corran]

I seem to remember that Rhein II was taken with an 8x10 and heavily altered digitally. I could be wrong.

[Chester McCheeserton]

Not sure if it the Rhein picture was 8x10 or 5x7...Initially, as I'm sure the OP read in the Gursky moma catalogue essay,the students at the Dusseldorf school used 5x7 (or prob 13x18) because that was the size of the enlarger the school had...I know the 99cent store was 5x7-13x18...but I also think that he used 8x10 for a lot of the well known ones after he was out of school too. But maybe they were all 4x5? i'm not sure.

Drew by 'fugitive' do you mean because they are face mounted C-prints that won't last?

If so, what do you think of Struth's or the Becher's black-and-white work printed in the darkroom?

I'd guess there's way more more money in ultra rich collectors using multi-million dollar art collections as tax write-off scams then in meth....

[Chester McCheeserton]

well maybe not way more

meth trade 54 billion
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/myanmar-state-centre-of-global-meth-trade

global art market 63.7 billlion
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-art-market-hit-637-billion-2017-key-takeaways-art-basel-report

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/49625

[manfrominternet]

Have you seen those iphone billboards? They look pretty good....But kidding sort of. Yes I'd agree that if you want to make a print that size especially if it's landscape picture with sky, or lots of subtle detail then 8x10 negative is still king...I had never seen the 'ibiza' picture it's nice, seems like a return to his early style...does it matter what camera was used if it's a compelling picture? if i had to guess it looks more like digital that's been cropped to 4x5 aspect ratio and grain added, something about the highlights and grain seems too smooth and sharp for film...but I could very well be wrong.

I didn't see those particular Crewdson prints in person but I think the differences have gotten much subtler and that few people care how it originated...I've done some tests of the exact same picture with the a7r3 and 5x7 and I think the digital can more than hold a candle...but of course you're right it will always look a little different. A friend compared it to using a tube amp vs a solid state amp. both have unique qualities.

Yea, I think Crewdson is considered 2nd tier to Jeff Wall, even if they now show at the same gallery. Crewdson has the technical chops but his idea is much indebted to Wall's earlier work, and Crewdson makes kind of a watered down version of what Wall did much earlier and more complexly - Crewdson references Spielberg and American TV angst while Wall is in dialog much more deeply with nuanced and ambitious issues within the history of representation, filmmakers like Fassbinder, and lesser known figures in the history of photo like Wols. The collector's who buy the Crewdsons can't afford the Walls. Crewdson's work looks like illustrations for a really good HBO series, but Wall's best pictures are weirder and have multiple layers of reference.

also many more reputable institutions and critics/historians have backed or written on Wall then Crewdson...but then Wall still shoots film so maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot here...

I completely agree with what you said about Crewdson and his references to Spielberg, David Lynch, American TV, and especially how his work looks like illustrations for a really good HBO series. Wall is much more nuanced... but I'll still always love Crewsdon's "Beneath The Roses."

Also, Wall has an insanely strong grasp with speaking on photographic art theory. Even though Crewdson is the head of Yale's Department of Photography and presumably very smart on the subject, Wall could easily talk circles around Crewdson. Listening and reading Wall is a trip for sure.

[manfrominternet]

Some of the better known early works were stitched together from 5x7 film then heavily PS altered. I suspect that much of the initial pioneering impact of this kind of methodology will wear thin as it increasingly becomes routine and passe. I happen to like the rather unique compositional strategies of both Gursky and Burtynsky, but scratch my head at the kinds of prices being paid for a fugitive medium. It's even more ironic when very expensive currently trendy "paintings" involve cheap art store tissue papers glued on with $1.99 tubes of acrylic caulking. At least that will leave curators and conservators the option to flush the whole fragile thing if they don't wish to store it. But I suppose spending obscenely large amounts of high-brow money on art is no worse than the billions of dollars a year of low-brow money being spent on meth. A passing high.

Probably a crazy question to ask, but I'll ask anyway: Would you happen to know which works were made with a 5x7 or a 4x5? I know that he did many, if not most, of his major works with a Linhof 4x5 camera. Nowadays, I have no idea. Specifically, I would absolutely love to know what he used to make this absolutely phenomenal photograph: http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2017/tokyo

I figured that some of his works titled "Mobile Nr. 1, Mobile Nr. 2, and Mobile Nr. 3" were simply taken with his iPhone:

http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/ohne-titel-12
http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/mobil-nr-2
http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2017/mobile-nr-3

[manfrominternet]

Not sure if it the Rhein picture was 8x10 or 5x7...Initially, as I'm sure the OP read in the Gursky moma catalogue essay,the students at the Dusseldorf school used 5x7 (or prob 13x18) because that was the size of the enlarger the school had...I know the 99cent store was 5x7-13x18...but I also think that he used 8x10 for a lot of the well known ones after he was out of school too. But maybe they were all 4x5? i'm not sure.

Drew by 'fugitive' do you mean because they are face mounted C-prints that won't last?

If so, what do you think of Struth's or the Becher's black-and-white work printed in the darkroom?

I'd guess there's way more more money in ultra rich collectors using multi-million dollar art collections as tax write-off scams then in meth....

While Gursky definitely used a 5x7, I strongly suspect that he used a Linhof 4x5 for many, if not most of his photographs. What I'm really after is what he's using nowadays, but apparently it's super top secret... which, honestly makes it all the more interesting to me.

Check out this video where Gursky brushes off a reporter for presumably asking too many questions about his technique (1:02 - 1:26): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p876xhLfQGs

[Audii-Dudii]

Specifically, I would absolutely love to know what he used to make this absolutely phenomenal photograph: http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2017/tokyo

I don't know anything about how he took that photo, only that the badly out of focus foreground strongly suggests (to me, anyway!) he was not using a proper view camera...

I know this thread is not a referendum about his photos per se, but as much as I like a lot of his work -- and I like the subject matter and composition of this photo, too! -- if I had taken it and this was the result, I definitely would have binned it instead of featuring it.

Which is perhaps one of the (no doubt many, many) reasons why I'm merely a humble hobbyist after all these years instead of a world famous photographer / artist? <shrugs>

[Corran]

Going out on a limb here - it's likely he did use a view camera, but used too much tilt (intentional?). The blurred area looks like a tilted plane of focus to me, and the foreground is far enough away that I think it would be mostly in focus with no movements (perhaps just slightly soft if not within the DOF).

The aspect ratio is rather longish, so 5x7 (cropped slightly still, from top/bottom) would make sense.

[Audii-Dudii]

Going out on a limb here - it's likely he did use a view camera, but used too much tilt (intentional?). The blurred area looks like a tilted plane of focus to me, and the foreground is far enough away that I think it would be mostly in focus with no movements (perhaps just slightly soft if not within the DOF).

That is definitely a possibility, but in my experience, excessive tilt almost always reveals itself at both the top and bottom of the photo. Of course, my experience has been using axis tilt, not base or asymmetric tilt, and a significant portion of the top of this photo is sky, which likely won't look much different whether it's in focus or out...

But what do I know?

P.S.: You have a nice blog, with some very nice photos! :D





The aspect ratio is rather longish, so 5x7 (cropped slightly still, from top/bottom) would make sense.[/QUOTE]

[Corran]

Thanks!

Also maybe the top part with more obvious tilt artifacts was cropped? I'm just guessing here really.

[chacabuco]

That shot is a composite of several images shot from a high speed train https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/blog/tokyo-andreas-gursky

[Corran]

Well there you go, the weird OOF area is actually lateral motion blur. And manipulation.

[Kiwi7475]

Very interesting. And to think that now we’d probably be criticized if we used a bunch of pictures and create a composite in Photoshop using the blur tool to create something like this (I’m saying if it was a new concept, not just imitating him).

[Mark Sampson]

Well, you can use any tool in the box IF you can make it work. And you have to imagine it first, which is the hard part, I think.
One thing for sure- the work of Gursky, Struth, et al. shows the technical possibilites of the medium today- which they are exploiting to the fullest.

[Drew Wiley]

Today's exciting tools will be tomorrow's buggy whips and butter churns. Look at what has happened to Uelsmann's work now than any school kid can do the same thing just by pushing a few buttons - NO, not with the same aestethic or technical finesse; but not many people pay attention to that; they just want what's trendy and advertises their success, conspicuous-consumption-wise. But drug money versus big art money? Heck, conspicuous trendy art, conspicuous trendy real estate, and looted antiquities is exactly where overtly rich thugs, dictators, and oligarchs launder a lot of money. Spending big on such things doesn't necessarily imply good taste. They're usually follow a trail set by others first, on the scent of money. Well, those huge prints are hard to store, and in all probability most of them are going to be displayed in a high-UV environment. Fugitive. But so are the careers and even lives of many thugs, not to mention artists and music stars who suddenly have more money than their limited common sense can handle.

[manfrominternet]

Here's something I read up on Gursky's "Tokyo" photo: https://www.ft.com/content/2d52904c-f592-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1a00 (Note that this may be blocked by a paywall, so I'll just copy and paste some relevant text and one of the photos in the article. From this photo, I'm sure someone here can dissect how he might have made his "Tokyo" work better than I can.)

"One of the new works in his show... is pinned up on his studio walls. It's a view of Tokyo, taken from the Shinkansen (bullet train). Seen from the raised vantage point of the track, the city stretches out towards the distant skyline; low-rise buildings in the foreground, slightly distorted by the blur of speed, leading back, layer upon layer, to high-rise blocks clustered around the horizon, with, at the highest point, a silver spire pointing towards the sky... Like most of Gursky's work over the past 20 years, the final version will be built from multiple images, each slightly different, parts from one added to or replacing from another, until he has something that finally satisfies him."

From the image in the article of Gursky standing in front of all of those photographs taken from the bullet train (see attached), I can't really tell, but maybe it is with a large format camera, given the aspect ratio. Then again, he may have just used the Phase One/Alpa combo. Can anyone here crack this one?

191559

[Amedeus]

based on what I see on the wall, the larger prints on the right could very easily be Phase One digital back, 100MP, the latter gives me 30" x 40" images out of the back, no crops.

Just a guess based on size

Cheers,

[Greg]

Have been using digital equipment since the early 1990s starting with a Kodak DCS200. Since then have owned many different digital cameras and have had the privilege of being able to try out models from pretty much every brand. My educated guess is that he now uses a Hasselblad H6D with the 100MP back. I emphasize using the word "guess". For me though, I honestly can care less as to what equipment he uses. Have done multi stitching to produce very large final prints and developed my own technique which was not based on other photographers techniques or on what equipment they used... but then that's just me.

[Drew Wiley]

I find the whole hero-worship nonsense of the haute art world to actually be boring. I like looking at intelligent composition etc in photography, and am willing to give credit where credit is due, but have little patience for the side of it which involves the combination of huge prints, huge money, huge egos, and huge cities. Adding novel technological methods to that list of trendiness makes it only more shallow, because all that kind of thing is relative, and will inevitably become stale once something fancier arrives.

[DrTang]

Going out on a limb here - it's likely he did use a view camera, but used too much tilt (intentional?). The blurred area looks like a tilted plane of focus to me, and the foreground is far enough away that I think it would be mostly in focus with no movements (perhaps just slightly soft if not within the DOF).

The aspect ratio is rather longish, so 5x7 (cropped slightly still, from top/bottom) would make sense.

looks to me like he was on a train or something moving that affected the foreground more than the background... looks shot with a phone or digital from a moving train

[Chester McCheeserton]

The art world really likes photography that speaks to the digitization of our present moment. So if it's not on a flatscreen monitor and moving it often has glitches, 'bad photoshop', or references to instagram /snapchat culture...Gursky is just trying to keep up but his best work is way behind him. Check out younger photographers like Lucas Blalock, Hannah Whitaker, Daniel Gordon, Torbjorn Rodland, Roe Ethridge or Trisha Donnelly. Or there a whole book called "Photography is Magic" by Charlotte Cotton that draws together dozens of these figures. Somebody should get Drew a copy.

Or just go take a picture of a stream in the woods at F64. No one knows yet who the Jerry Uelsmann of 2015 will be...

[manfrominternet]

Well, I found these from 2007 and 2009. Did he threw away his large format toys and go all in on the digital revolution? (The one with the two Linhof Master Technikas is from 2007, the rest are from 2009.) At this point, I wonder if he's using film anymore...

191645 191646 191647 191648

[interneg]

glitches, 'bad photoshop', or references to instagram /snapchat culture...

Which Gursky's work has had for several decades from it was being composited on a Quantel Graphic Paintbox - quite possibly intended as a commentary on the slick production of mass media product.

[Drew Wiley]

May photography rest in peace, hopefully in some quiet shaded cemetery where someone like me can set up a boring old-fashioned still shot of its venerable lichen-encrusted tombstone with my 8X10. I have no idea what to call all this neo-stuff. I guess "art" is good enough, since it's so broad a classification that it means absolutely nothing in particular. But I tend to think of it as painting for those who can't actually paint. Interesting, yup. Genius? - no way.

[interneg]

But I tend to think of it as painting for those who can't actually paint.

Neopictorialism then? :p

There's certainly a view that it's become worth so much money because it is much easier to explain to buyers what the artist/ photographer did compared to most other photographs - see Paul Graham's lecture/ essay on 'The Unreasonable Apple' (https://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/writings_by.html)

[Drew Wiley]

I think lots of museums and so forth are running on fumes, desperate to attract an audience with one novelty after another just to keep income coming in. Digital nonsense is trendy. Of course, I don't mean this as an affront to Gursky, whose compositions I often like. But it's largely new-techno based. Reminds me of back when a notable local gallery wanted to throw a then-new media exhibition based on Cibachrome. I turned him down. Of course, there were a lot of subjects with bright red in them; but I rarely included red. Just another trendy gimmick of yesteryear, Cibachrome red. All this will pass too. People knew how to comp Bigfoot, Elvis, and aliens into the same picture just with scissors and glue once. I see no difference. They should throw a big museum show of National Enquirer covers.

[John Olsen]

[QUOTE=They should throw a big museum show of National Enquirer covers.[/QUOTE]

I'd pay to see that.

[Drew Wiley]

I'm in a bit cranky mood - not in general, but just with regard to the whole momentum of modern art exhibitions etc, which I find myself increasingly ignoring. A couple weeks ago the SFMMA sent out advertising soliciting memberships, with the upcoming feature being a big Warhol retrospective. Well, in my estimation that's tantamount to saying they're going to put a Starbucks in their lobby. I don't want another Starbucks. Instead, find me a street corner without one! Likewise, Warhol has become such a commodity that he should simply be packaged and sold in the frozen goods section of Costco or Safeway; he's on every corner already, and it would certainly be refreshing to find some new fresh produce instead of the usual suspects... and I don't mean digitized Paintball Wars, which are everywhere too. Being holed up in my own darkroom doing my own thing is a lot more interesting. Even a throwaway print I've done myself beats another endless Warhol or Avedon or whatever.

[Chester McCheeserton]

Well yeah, museums having to attract big crowds with "blockbuster" shows that are made to instagram and that the crowds can understand without knowing anything about the history of art or whatever medium it's in is irritating. I'm not a fan of digitized paintball wars either. But it's complicated. They have to get people in the door...people will find ways to hate on fresh produce or worse, ignore it...Gursky figured out how to make us look hard at the frozen food section as relevant subject matter! Curators can't really take chances or go out on limbs, they have to show what's already been vetted by the gallery system and what the big donors have donated.

The museum of contemporary art in LA did a show of photographs by Zoe Leonard, I doubt it was noticed much by people who weren't already aware of her work....But a curator at a major museum would lose their job if they were like, Yeah I want to give this whole floor to Clyde Butcher who does these quiet landscape photographs of swamps in Florida. I do think it's worthwhile to at least look at the people who use photography who get attention in the art word, even if you hate it or think it's stupid. For me at least, attempting to understand why their photography (or whatever they do) is so exulted makes me feel less trapped inside the box of photography that doesn't mean anything outside of itself.

But I'm with you Drew, going to an art museum feels increasingly similar to going through airport security or attending a large concert....not exactly my idea of a good time.

[Corran]

Clyde is getting plenty of museum space here in the south. And I am always impressed by how many people know him or his work (of course, I understand I am right next to Florida here so obviously that is a factor). On the other hand, I did just overhear two obvious gearheads joking about the crazy old guy in Florida shooting view cameras in the swamp and then went back to discussing whatever $5,000 digital system they had bought this year.

Anyway, what's wrong with a major museum showing his work? Is classic b&w film landscapes passé in that space? And if so, why? Personally in my eyes, the current academic world and by extension museums are pandering not to crowds but instead to superficial work that is more about a political or social statement rather than excellent photography/art.

Since we are talking about art...when I first learned about Gursky, it was when Rhein II was the most expensive photograph ever. I didn't understand it or its relatively banal subject, at least on the surface. Now, I appreciate it more as an echo of Color Field paintings like those by Rothko. I also was lucky enough to see some massive prints of Gursky's work at an art museum, I think in Florida, a few years ago. It was certainly much more impressive than a 600px JPEG.

[Chester McCheeserton]

Anyway, what's wrong with a major museum showing his work? Is classic b&w film landscapes passé in that space? And if so, why? Personally in my eyes, the current academic world and by extension museums are pandering not to crowds but instead to superficial work that is more about a political or social statement rather than excellent photography/art..

There'd be nothing wrong with a major museum showing his work, it's just not instagram–able enough to be a crowd pleaser – I'd certainly go see it. Yes, I think classic b&w film landscapes are seen as passé in that space, simply because they are 'classic'. Views of nature - no matter how well crafted and beautiful, for most of the contemporary art audience, aren't enough, there's gotta be some idea, or political content...I mean I guess Sugimoto's seascapes, Lynn Davis's icebergs, (can anyone think of more?) but even those are 20-30 years old now. Even landscapes with obvious man made stuff in it a la Robert Adams, unless it's Robert Adams himself, is seen as too 70s New Topopgraphics, and old news...Excellent photography is not necessarily excellent Art outside of a safe space like this forum!

I think Thomas Joshua Cooper is an exception, he was supposed to have a show at LACMA, but it was delayed or cancelled doubtless because it wasn't splashy enough. maybe Mark Ruwedel - ever heard of him? the art audience wants to connect it to other forms of art like 'land art' or 'conceptual art'...You're absolutely right the work that is shown usually does have a political or social statement but the elite would argue that it's not superficial, they would argue that simply depicting nature without intervening or having an idea is superficial and about nothing other then technique...

[Corran]

There'd be nothing wrong with a major museum showing his work, it's just not instagram–able enough to be a crowd pleaser –

Depends on the crowd. I wonder about the general population, the non-artists, perhaps an untapped audience which very well may not be interested or like the overtly politicized or social commentary stuff. Perhaps contemplative landscapes would be something unusual in this day and age in some galleries! And as Adams showed, all landscapes can be political, and perhaps those worried about global warming and environmental issues should remember his political impact through photography.

I'm reminded of classical orchestras, but perhaps in the opposite way. Many are stagnating (old rich donors dying off) and younger audiences aren't interested in the "classics" from Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms - so many are working hard to bring in new audiences with more pop-oriented stuff (consider the huge uptick in movie screenings w/ live orchestral performance of the soundtrack) and also the programming of more modern works / modernist composers using technology in new ways. When I was a professional musician in two orchestras I loved getting to play new and interesting music. I was also one of the stage managers and recording engineer for an iPad concerto. Huge draw to these concerts, just not from the traditional crowd.

What do young, new audiences w/o an art background want to see I wonder? What would bring them in to the museum? Recently at the High in Atlanta, Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrors exhibit was sold-out and a huge draw for young audiences. I think the "cool" factor greatly outweighed any "message" in the work, which I will admit I have not really researched. Myself, I did not get to go due to the High's absolutely abysmal ticketing system. I declined to buy a scalped ticket at 10x the cost. I have gone to the High many times, but my personal favorite area is the top floor with modern work and usually a photography feature. These modern works are in massive rooms and they are usually pretty empty. I'm not sure if these works bring crowds. The photography exhibits, unfortunately, are horribly lit - a real disservice to the work.

[reddesert]

There was a giant Ansel Adams exhibit at the MFA in Boston just a few months ago that got writeups in pretty much every major newspaper that still covers art - I think I read about it in the WSJ, the NY Times, and the LA Times (or maybe it was the WA Post) at least. Yes it was St. Ansel and not a currently working B&W landscape photographer, but I think the idea that B&W landscape photography is persona non grata at museums because they are all on an Instagram bandwagon, is crying into one's beer. In fact, one can be interested in both "straight" photography and manipulated images ...

[manfrominternet]

I'm enjoying where this thread is going...

Anyway, I'm just going to throw this in here. In 2016, Gursky took/made a photograph entitled "Darkroom": http://m.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/dunkelkammer/zoom:1

This photo may not be so taciturn. If you click on the photo and zoom in on the boxes of sheet film, you'll see all the "process by" dates are from 2004 to 2007. Is this photo meant to document something that is or will no longer be in use, with an echo/nod towards the Becher's (Gursky's professors, Bernd and Hilla) capturing the decaying architectural structures around Western Europe and the U.S.?

Anyway, I'm likely oversimplifying and reading too much into this, but could this photo conceivably be Gursky's final nail in film's coffin? Perhaps film to him is dead after all, which is particularly depressing because I thought that he, above all, understood that film has something that digital doesn't... at least not yet. :/

[Chester McCheeserton]

The Kusama Infinity Mirror is exactly what I meant by instagram-able...and to bring it back to Gursky - that's a big part of why he was so successful because of the 'cool' factor...and it's funny when you say Adams I assume you mean Ansel Adams, but when I think of 'Adams' photography I'm always thinking about Robert Adams, to me his work is way more important....

and reddesert I wasn't saying that museums are all just on an instagram bandwagon, but that straight landscape photography isn't seen as particularly contemporary or relevant. I think it's telling that the writing about that AA show always comes back to 'saving the planet', I mean, sure we should do that, but is that all there is to talk about in landscape photography? it seems boring...like there should be something more to discuss...but I'd agree with you that one can be interested in both 'straight' and 'manipulated' images....
but probably not many people in NYC would consider the Boston MFA a major US museum!

[Oren Grad]

There was a giant Ansel Adams exhibit at the MFA in Boston just a few months ago that got writeups in pretty much every major newspaper that still covers art - I think I read about it in the WSJ, the NY Times, and the LA Times (or maybe it was the WA Post) at least. Yes it was St. Ansel and not a currently working B&W landscape photographer, but I think the idea that B&W landscape photography is persona non grata at museums because they are all on an Instagram bandwagon, is crying into one's beer. In fact, one can be interested in both "straight" photography and manipulated images ...

I saw that show. FWIW, it wasn't pure Ansel - it was "see Ansel juxtaposed against others who have worked the same themes", and it included a fair amount of late-model art-school-y conceptual stuff.

https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/ansel-adams-in-our-time

[Oren Grad]

...and it's funny when you say Adams I assume you mean Ansel Adams, but when I think of 'Adams' photography I'm always thinking about Robert Adams, to me his work is way more important....

Quite a few years ago now the Addison Gallery at Phillips Andover had a fine show of Robert and Ansel, called "Reinventing the West". The catalog can be found second-hand for reasonable prices.

[Chester McCheeserton]

I saw that show. FWIW, it wasn't pure Ansel - it was "see Ansel juxtaposed against others who have worked the same themes", and it included a fair amount of late-model art-school-y conceptual stuff.

https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/ansel-adams-in-our-time

Which were you into more Oren, the Opie out of focus digital Yosemite Waterfall or Trevor Paglen's Sunset cloud but it's really about drone warfare?

[Chester McCheeserton]

I In 2016, Gursky took/made a photograph entitled "Darkroom": http://m.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/dunkelkammer/zoom:1

This photo may not be so taciturn. If you click on the photo and zoom in on the boxes of sheet film, you'll see all the "process by" dates are from 2004 to 2007. Is this photo meant to document something that is or will no longer be in use, with an echo/nod towards the Becher's (Gursky's professors, Bernd and Hilla) capturing the decaying architectural structures around Western Europe and the U.S.?
/

It's him trying to keep up with Christopher Williams, whose 'photography about photography' eclipsed Gursky's landscape photos around 2005

[reddesert]

I saw that show. FWIW, it wasn't pure Ansel - it was "see Ansel juxtaposed against others who have worked the same themes", and it included a fair amount of late-model art-school-y conceptual stuff.

https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/ansel-adams-in-our-time

I think the articles I read discussed the "Adams in context" aspect, and FWIW I think this can be really valuable, if nothing else to rescue his work from what I might call calendar over-exposure. As a youngster I was skeptical of the popularity of St. Ansel among photographers - obviously the work is beautiful and technically skilled, but it's almost too easy to venerate, and my first love was street photography (I still expect that if I ever go to heaven, I'm going to see God carrying around a beat-up Leica, thinking that he's Robert Frank).

It wasn't until I saw an exhibition on photography of the desert West, including the pioneers, then Weston, A. Adams, Lange, and contemporary photographers like Lewis Baltz, Richard Misrach, Robert Adams, that I got some of the sense of the impact of the photographs of the west on the American public and the context ol' Ansel was working in. (The exhibition catalog is called "Perpetual Mirage" - I have a copy, which is helping refresh the memory.)

Speaking of Catherine Opie, some time ago I saw an exhibit of hers that was small prints - probably contact prints maybe 6x17, possibly platinum prints - of Los Angeles freeway interchanges, overpasses, and similar monumental structures. It was amazing (and an unexpected direction given most of her work that I knew). They reminded me, again, of these early photographs of Western canyons, or explorers' photographs of the Sphinx.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, in any city restaurant review, which in this area in mostly a TV thing, it's inevitable that some classic steak and potatoes place is going to end up getting compared on the same show to some new fusion cuisine joint. Or its beer against wine against champagne. We should be glad for variety; but using stereotyped genre labels like, "landscape photography" does't help a bit. It's analogous to implying all "street photography" looks the same, or that all "people photography" is predictable. I was involved in one of those AA versus youngster working in a more metaphysical form of imagery gigs myself, so in a sense was basically parasitic on the reputation of AA drawing an audience, but otherwise had no problem holding my own. But I can understand the resentment to how AA has become an ubiquitous visual commodity that's a must-have for collections and big shows, just like I'm annoyed by stumbling into Avedon or Warhol everywhere. Resorting to paintball war technique or digital comps - all that stuff - I regard that kind of thing a mostly (not universally) a cop-out, a substitute for not really looking at things with much depth to begin with.
That's one reason I think Avedon was a fraud, at least when he did his famous work of the West. He was never in the West, never saw a damn thing. He just drove around making stereotypes of what he thought would be catchy fare for his big city audiences. Robert Adams was just the opposite - he could into read nuances.

[Oren Grad]

I think the articles I read discussed the "Adams in context" aspect, and FWIW I think this can be really valuable, if nothing else to rescue his work from what I might call calendar over-exposure.

I agree.

Here are the brief observations I posted at the time - mixed feelings about many of the exhibited works notwithstanding, it was a good opportunity for learning and for thinking about what Adams' pictures do (or don't do) for me as a viewer, and why:

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?148884-quot-Ansel-Adams-in-Our-Time-quot&p=1475901&viewfull=1#post1475901

And I think the contrast between Robert and Ansel illuminates both of them - neither ending up as "better"/"worse", just clarifying what each is doing.

Not to forget the main focus of this thread, I'm afraid Gursky doesn't work for me at all - just nothing there with any resonance for me. I do understand how the elaborate production serves his purposes, so more power to him.

[Drew Wiley]

Good point, Oren. Even when we don't respond to something personally, sometimes it catalyzes our thought process into a why or why not mode, and helps us define our own path forward. The problem I see with Ansel is that so much of the public does take his as a kind of standard to aspire to, in which his ubiquity has largely defined what great Western scenes are "supposed to" look like, that they entirely miss his more nuanced side, often present within these very same iconic images. Since I grew up in the Sierra, I, more than most, can appreciate his sensitivity to the natural light, and how he often (not always) successfully captured it in print. There is a poetry to it, which takes awhile to get. I tend to gravitate to the less obvious, but not exclusively. I'm an opportunist, but not a mimic, and besides, cut my teeth in color printing, not black and white. AA had a historic role in the momentum of our National Parks by presenting these things on grand scale, just as we can indeed still see them today because they have been protected. But Robert Adams reminds us more of what lays neglected on the wayside, forgotten; and his own quieter style of printing is appropriate to that.

[Chester McCheeserton]

moma nicely posted a pdf of their 2001 catalog:

https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_170_300133895.pdf

Peter Galassi's lengthy essay won't convert you into being a fan if you're not already, but might be of interest in the way he connects Gursky's legacy back to America and the view camera tradition here.

[Oren Grad]

Thanks, that is a great resource.

[manfrominternet]

moma nicely posted a pdf of their 2001 catalog:

https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_170_300133895.pdf

Peter Galassi's lengthy essay won't convert you into being a fan if you're not already, but might be of interest in the way he connects Gursky's legacy back to America and the view camera tradition here.

So funny. I just reread the Moma-Galassi Gursky monograph just yesterday. There's a LOT in that essay.

[Audii-Dudii]

So funny. I just reread the Moma-Galassi Gursky monograph just yesterday. There's a LOT in that essay.

Perhaps even more funny (I'm not certain whether I mean ha-ha or strange here) is that I have owned a copy of this book for almost a decade now but have yet to read any of the text in it.

Truth be told, I rarely read any of the text in photobooks, except for the captions, explanatory notes about how / where the photos were taken, and interviews with the photographer.

I love to read well-done interviews with photographers, but the opinions of a critic or curator or other famous person about the photos and/or the photographer and their motivation(s) are usually of little to no interest to me. <shrugs>

[Drew Wiley]

Depends who writes the monograph. Lots are just filler or background context discussion. Some of the better writers ignore technique altogether. I personally hate a lot of f-stop, lens, and filter notes in nice picture books. How-to articles are more appropriate fot that kind of thing. Szarkowski's classic monographs are wonderfully readable; Hambourg's analysis of Atget in four volumes is quite insightful. Having a bit of retrospective distance in history is also an advantage. When something is at the height of its posssibly transient appeal or inflated sales hype, like Gursky in recent years, it's hard to be objective.

[manfrominternet]

Btw, I did find this on openphotographyforums.com. This was written in 2014, so take this with a grain of salt --

"All the published pictures of A. Gursky up to now, are shot with film and he still works with his Linhof, he did get an ALPA/Phase one combination a couple of years ago, but this is used more instead of a polaroid to compose a shot, he does very little serious work using digital sensor (the Bankong images?) which are much simpler (and much cheaper) single shots and are print using inject [sic] printer…"

Well, I guess the best thing to do is to look over Gursky's later work and actually just look at it to see if there are any artifacts suggesting if the work was shot in film or digital: http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works

Anyone want to take a stab at this one?: http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/media-markt

[Oren Grad]

Anyone want to take a stab at this one?: http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/media-markt

Can't tell. The web jpg doesn't allow us to enlarge enough to see the micro-structure of the image, which is where you'd find the sort of evidence one would need to seriously debate the question.

[Chester McCheeserton]

It's digital I'm pretty sure. You can zoom in enough to see the digital sharpness/smoothness and lack of grain on things like the pegboard in the middle right side as well as the creases in the vacuum hoses in front of it. This picture is a pale comparison remake of his 99 cent store picture, which was made on film. I saw it once in a group show at Princeton in 2002 and the grain was huge/terrible looking when you got close, especially in comparison to the 11x14 and 16x20 analog prints by other artist photographers that were hung nearby.

Just to keep stirring the pot, I'll post this: Charlie White writing about Mark Wyse's work in 2011...you can read the whole essay here. you guys will love it...:) http://charliewhite.info/writings/

"The parameters of the material print and its processes have ceased to be determining factors for how the contemporary photograph operates. Physical location, material properties, and chemical procedures are no longer of immediate consequence to the medium. In the photograph’s two-decade-long transition to immateriality, visual representation has been freed from the limitations of location, distribution, and reproduction, while meaning has shifted in conjunction with the removal of the material factors that formerly controlled its reception."

[Oren Grad]

It's digital I'm pretty sure. You can zoom in enough to see the digital sharpness/smoothness and lack of grain on things like the pegboard in the middle right side as well was the creases in the vacuum hoses in front of it.

The kandy-kolored, rendered-in-sharpened-jello look is certainly suggestive. But we don't know how many captures went into it. With enough aggregate film area and a heavy dose of noise reduction, color profile tuning and sharpening we might not be able to tell for sure in a jpg at this size.

[Drew Wiley]

He doesn't just stitch and blend frames, but is known add, remove, or shift position of people, structural beams, etc, which also means dubbing content into the missing sections, which is why I call it painting instead of photography. And Dali did that kind of thing a thousand percent better with a real paintbrush.

[manfrominternet]

Does anyone here actually know Andreas Gursky personally, met him in person, or has seen him work? It seems crazy that he can keep his process such a secret for so long.

It's a pipe dream, but I hope he Googles his own name, finds this thread, and elucidates us with his process. Of course he would probably berate me for being so nosy.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, do people in this forum like his work, or not so much? A couple of you guys seem to disdain his work.

[Audii-Dudii]

Anyway, do people in this forum like his work, or not so much? A couple of you guys seem to disdain his work.

I liked his early work quite a lot, although that diminished considerably after I learned just how much manipulation he does during post-processing.

IMO, he's not so much a photographer these days as he is an artist and I'm not as interested in art generally as I am photography specifically.

[Drew Wiley]

There's nothing secret about his methodology at all. It's been described before, and basically involves a lot of tedious PS manipulation using large format film multiples. Some of that kind of work has been simplified hence by even newer digital tweaks or enhanced speed. It's all very small scale in comparison to what the movie industry does these days in terms of manipulation. In principle, school kids could do it. But Gursky goes after a particular academic appeal, much like Wegman did with his weimeraner dog pictures before, with their posed classic art analogs. It's targeted to a haute audience, in contrast, for example, to the bottom of the barrel kitchy appeal of Peter Lik's equally manipulated LF images. To me, it's still just painting by those who don't wish to actually paint, but use computers instead. The craft of stitching is currently running amuk, and will become passe soon enough, just another cute novelty that will gets lost in the rear-view mirror once everyone takes it for granted as routine.

[Corran]

A couple of you guys seem to disdain his work.

Ignore the obvious overbearing critic. I'm a fan.


[...] I'm not as interested in art generally as I am photography specifically.

This is quite an interesting statement that could be fodder for a whole other thread.

[Drew Wiley]

I have no disdain for it; I just think that photography is the wrong pigeonhole, and that the prices being paid are beyond ludicrous. He has a wonderful sense of balance and pattern and knows what he wants to do with it. You take an early classic like 99 Cent. He stumbled onto to a promising subject where he wanted a lot of detail in a busy pattern study presented as a strong horizontal, where all that detail could be brought out in an especially large print using view camera controls. So he took multiple shots. But then there were certain architectural elements (window dividers etc) which he found distracting, so needed a way to remove them. And it was essentially a street photo with people randomly moving in the scene of slow format work, so did his best at the time, and then reconstructed the stitch of frames afterwards. Clever; but people in Hollywood have been paid for decades to routinely do special effects one way or another, and few people even remember their names. ... Then you've got that big freeway overpass span stitch. It no doubt has way more impact when displayed huge and somewhat overhead rather than in book form. That's because, just like some of Clyde Butcher's work, it's not meant to be viewed as if from outside the scene, but as if within it, and in this case, looking up from below. That's clever and he did it well. But I don't know why the art critics would see genius in this, since muralists and stained glass workers have already been using the same kind of strategy for centuries, and it's routinely taught in art history classes. And when it comes to value, after something like this has had its day of being featured in a public venue, it's clumsy to store and apt to be sold to some collector who will torture it either under skylights or some other form of UV-abuse. A number of these have already faded it seems. But obscenely rich people apparently pay other people to think for them and help them throw away wheelbarrows full of money just for the bragging rights. Again - just trying to add a little common-sense perspective to this. I'd be a lot more impressed by someone walking up to the 99 Cent store with a panoramic film camera and bagging the shot at some "critical moment" as-is; but then that would have meant the usual distortions brought on by very wide angle lenses which Gursky didn't want. So I get it.

[Audii-Dudii]

This is quite an interesting statement that could be fodder for a whole other thread.

Really? Well, have at it then...

To clarify what I meant by my comment within this thread, though, let me add that my interest in art has more to do with creating my own than appreciating that of others.

And for a variety of reasons, my chosen medium is photography, so that's naturally where my interest lies.

Having gone all-in on photography as the medium I use to create my personal art, I have little interest in other art mediums -- for example, mixed-media collage and sculpture rarely pique my interest -- even though I know I may well benefit from exposing myself to them, as many do.

But life is short and my time is ultimately limited, so I am comfortable being a bit myopic and happily limit my exposure to art created by others to that which is created by photographers.

I honestly have no need or desire to ever become a generalist and focusing my attention on what interests me strikes me as being the most efficient and productive approach to help me realize whatever potential I have in creating my own art.

To that end, while I personally photograph in a small niche that is practiced and/or appreciated by only a few, I do spend a lot of time looking at the work done by other photographers -- preferably in print rather than online, hence the reason I've accumulated a modest collection of photobooks (417 as of my count last week ... yikes!) -- studying the results they achieve, as well as the techniques they use.

Obviously, this is the approach that works best for me and I make no claims that it will also work well for others.

As always, YMMV! :D

[Chester McCheeserton]

take an early classic like 99 Cent.... But then there were certain architectural elements (window dividers etc) which he found distracting, so needed a way to remove them.

I was told by someone who was in LA when he took that picture that he got the 99 cent store to actually remove the glass...obviously he worked out some deal with them as you used to see a cropped version of the picture overlaid with the owner wearing a 99 cent store apron on all the 99 cent trucks on the freeway. His former teachers, the Bechers, thought he started to go too far with the digital manipulation. But you could also look at him as updating a timeless subject matter, the shop window display, and see a clear lineage from Atget, to Walker Evans, to Lee Friedlander and Lewis Baltz, and then Gursky. But I'm telling you guys Gursky is seen as very retrograde and 90s now, now you should take pictures of storefronts like Zoe Leonard. and write a poem about the president while you're at it.

[Mark Sampson]

"retrograde and 90s"... I guess being at the top of the art/fashion market is like being a supermodel. Never look back; there's always someone younger and skinnier coming along to take your place. That said, I do intend to check out some of the names you mentioned earlier.

[Drew Wiley]

I admire his determination, but some of his subject matter is just too nervous for me; same reason I have zero interest in rap music, overty busy neo-jazz, and "street art" (spray paint vandalism, as far as I'm concerned). I don't see why something done even 1890's should be necessarily be seen as "retrograde". Anything of real notable value should stand a test of time measured in centuries, not a few years. But all this kind of work will literally fade into oblivion long before that is possible. Everything about digital seems to involve becoming rapidly obsolete as something even more catchy arises in succession.

[manfrominternet]

To everyone reading this thread,

1.) What are your very favorite photographs by Gursky?
2.) Why are these your favorites?

Here's a link to all of his published works, for your convenience: http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works

I might as well go first--

(From his earliest to latest works)
1.) Gas Cooker http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1980/gasherd
2.) Klausen Pass http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1984/klausenpas
3.) Dolomiten, Cable Car http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1987/dolomiten-seilbahn
4.) Rias Bajas http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1988/rias-baja
5.) Dresden http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1988/dresden
6.) Ruhr Valley http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1989/ruhrtal
7.) Niagara Falls http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1989/niagara-falls
8.) Mulheim an der Ruhr, Angler http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1989/muelheim-an-der-ruhr-angle
9.) Krefeld, Chickens http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1989/krefeld-huehner
10.) Salerno I http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1990/salerno-1
11.) Karlsruhe, Siemens http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1991/karlsruhe-siemens
12.) Genua http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1991/genua
13.) Sha Tin http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1994/sha-tin
14.) Schiphol http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1994/schipho
15.) Hong Kong, Stock Exchange II http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1994/hong-kong-boerse-2
16.) Dusseldorf, Airport II http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1994/duesseldorf-flughafen-2
17.) Rhein I (as opposed to the second version, Rhein II) http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1996/rhein-1
18.) Toys "R" Us http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1999/toys-r-us
19.) Copan http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2002/copan
20.) Baihrain I http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2005/bahrain-1
21.) Pyongyang III http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2007/pyongyang-1-5/pyongyang-3
22.) James Bond Island I http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2007/james-bond-island-1-3/james-bond-island-1
23.) Storage http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2014/lager
24.) Media Markt http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/media-markt
25.) Ibiza http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/ibiza
26.) Darkroom http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/dunkelkammer
27.) Browns http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/browns
28.) Utah http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2017/utah
29.) Tokyo http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2017/tokyo
30.) Mobile No.3 http://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2017/mobile-nr-3

Yeah, it's a crazy list, I know. Just while copy/pasting these links, I've noticed just how much I like his earlier works more than his later works. As of late, it seems like Gursky is slowly entering Jeff Koons territory, an artist I despise for multiple reasons. With Gursky's early work, you can clearly see his technical command and the relatively unique content of his works, as compared to his fellow Kunstakademie students. I particularly like the fact that Gursky doesn't work in series. He treats each photograph as a painting of sorts that encompasses all he wants to say about the content being shown. I also like the angle from which the photographs are taken. They're generally taken from a god's eye view, a point that is difficult to reach. Photographs like Schiphol and Dolomiten, Cable Car have a meditative aspect that parallels the experience of being near a Rothko painting. Thanks to digital technology, Gursky's middle and later period are marked by increasingly impossible photos. Atlanta, Copan, and Baihrain I come to mind, among many others. In his later work, you can see that he fully embraces the abstract qualities rendered by digital photography and manipulation. See Utah and Tokyo. His mobile phone photos are actually quite good. Above all, I admire that Gursky has done something that is extremely difficult for any artist - he created an original and recognizable style that is very much his own.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, I'm not going to take that bait, though I think I have looked at every one of those images in their far less than ideal web fashion at one time or another. And I too prefer earlier work. He seemed to get stuck in a predictable groove later on, not quite as bad as a stuck record, but at least a bit annoying. Comparing him to Rothko? - no way. He certainly doesn't have that kind of handle on color sophistication, not even close. Inventing perspective? - just look at centuries of traditional Chinese painting.

[manfrominternet]

Well, I'm not going to take that bait, though I think I have looked at every one of those images in their far less than ideal web fashion at one time or another. And I too prefer earlier work. He seemed to get stuck in a predictable groove later on, not quite as bad as a stuck record, but at least a bit annoying. Comparing him to Rothko? - no way. He certainly doesn't have that kind of handle on color sophistication, not even close. Inventing perspective? - just look at centuries of traditional Chinese painting.

I meant that the experience of seeing a Gursky photograph (like his Schiphol photograph) parallels the experience I get when I see a Rothko painting. The two artists are, otherwise, very different, especially in regard to color. And the experience I mean has less to do with color and more to do with the overwhelming size of the print and canvas, respectively. Also, his perspective is relatively original in fine art photography. In comparison to master painters and painting, not so much, but then again Gursky isn't a painter.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, one thing they sometimes have in common is fugitive color. Some of Rothko's paintings faded rather quickly. His work also skyrocketed in price fairly quickly, and most of us probably already know how the mafia moved in and turned him into their captive art slave. Fame has its disadvantages.

[manfrominternet]

Well, one thing they sometimes have in common is fugitive color. Some of Rothko's paintings faded rather quickly. His work also skyrocketed in price fairly quickly, and most of us probably already know how the mafia moved in and turned him into their captive art slave. Fame has its disadvantages.

Agreed.

It seems like Gursky is willing to try new things, however conservative he may be. He's not as inventive as other artists and photographers; he admitted in an early interview that he was very unsure of himself as an artist to begin with. The money and inflated prices seemed to have validated that, at least to him, he is indeed an artist, even one to be taken seriously. I think he's aware of his limitations. His output is very small, but that's because he knows that creating a good photograph, one to be considered a work of art anyway, is extremely difficult.

[manfrominternet]

... Just trying to keep this thread alive...

[Drew Wiley]

I'm tuned in, but done pontificating for awhile. It's an interesting subject.

[swmcl]

in response to post #3 ...

I can't follow this thread because of this:

Video unavailable - This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.

Anyone got a copy?

[Chester McCheeserton]

in response to post #3 ...

I can't follow this thread because of this:

Video unavailable - This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.

Anyone got a copy?

it was kind of a glib half serious side note, note really connected to the OP's question – but here's another link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCL1SnIYZUw

[Drew Wiley]

The Mickey Mouse clock in the background at the start of the video says it all.

[manfrominternet]

Can anyone tell me what 5x7 camera model Gursky is using in this photo?

193896

I think this very camera might be the same one that he took his most famous pictures with.

[Oren Grad]

Pretty fuzzy, but... Sinar?

[Greg]

Pretty fuzzy, but... Sinar?

Have to agree.... I've heard of 4x5 Fs converted to 5x7 to save weight. Certainly the bottom of the standards look to be those of an F. If anyone has the DVD MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (Can't seem to find my copy at this time), it shows him setting up I believe a 5x7 which should be easy to ID.

[Drew Wiley]

Looks like a Sinar F series, one of the relatively later ones. It was probably 5x7 from the get-go, and not a converted 4x5. The considerable ease and precision of shift was probably one reason he was attracted to this camera if you think about the way he often negotiated obstacles.

[PRJ]

Agreed.

It seems like Gursky is willing to try new things, however conservative he may be. He's not as inventive as other artists and photographers; he admitted in an early interview that he was very unsure of himself as an artist to begin with. The money and inflated prices seemed to have validated that, at least to him, he is indeed an artist, even one to be taken seriously. I think he's aware of his limitations. His output is very small, but that's because he knows that creating a good photograph, one to be considered a work of art anyway, is extremely difficult.

You should take of the Pollyanna glasses. The main reason why someone like Gursky has limited output is because if his exorbitantly priced prints didn't sell, they would lose value, as would the prints he has already done, as would the prints he has yet to do. It is very carefully calculated to never let supply exceed demand.

Personally I think Gursky is a mixed bag. Sometimes the images are good and sometimes they are not. Just looking at his website it seems that he is repeating himself and some of the new stuff just isn't very good at all. Maybe that is his point. Gursky doesn't live in the photo world though, he lives in the art world. He manipulates his images so much I think of him more as an illustrator even though he attempts to make his images look like they really exist.

I've seen a few of his prints in person and once I got over the initial sighting of the rare dodo bird, I was kind of meh. Huge prints though. Impressively large.

As far as his technique, I seriously doubt that he still shoots film. Maybe that "Darkroom" image he has on his website is of the remaining film he is never going to shoot....

I think Esser is the most interesting photographer out of the Becher bunch.

[Drew Wiley]

Quite a few images are just too digitally altered content-wise to interest me as a photographer per se. It's a slippery slope once people and objects start getting shifted around.

[manfrominternet]

Looks like a Sinar F series, one of the relatively later ones. It was probably 5x7 from the get-go, and not a converted 4x5. The considerable ease and precision of shift was probably one reason he was attracted to this camera if you think about the way he often negotiated obstacles.

I believe you, Greg, and Oren are right. Looks like the Sinar F2 5x7 model. Gursky was obviously fond of the 5x7 format, likely because it was a good compromise between a 4x5 (which he used often) and an 8x10. If memory serves, he rarely used an 8x10.

But nowadays, it looks like Gursky is all in on the digital revolution and has left film behind, sadly. :(

[manfrominternet]

You should take of the Pollyanna glasses. The main reason why someone like Gursky has limited output is because if his exorbitantly priced prints didn't sell, they would lose value, as would the prints he has already done, as would the prints he has yet to do. It is very carefully calculated to never let supply exceed demand.

Personally I think Gursky is a mixed bag. Sometimes the images are good and sometimes they are not. Just looking at his website it seems that he is repeating himself and some of the new stuff just isn't very good at all. Maybe that is his point. Gursky doesn't live in the photo world though, he lives in the art world. He manipulates his images so much I think of him more as an illustrator even though he attempts to make his images look like they really exist.

I've seen a few of his prints in person and once I got over the initial sighting of the rare dodo bird, I was kind of meh. Huge prints though. Impressively large.

As far as his technique, I seriously doubt that he still shoots film. Maybe that "Darkroom" image he has on his website is of the remaining film he is never going to shoot....

I think Esser is the most interesting photographer out of the Becher bunch.

Yes, of course. I'm very familiar with the economics concerning Gursky's works. He and his gallerists (Victoria Miro, Sprüth & Magers) decided to sell his works as if he's a painter/serious artist creating unique and singular works, finding that the monied collectors/investors in the fine art world will gladly fork over big money in that kind of selling arrangement. I think he generally has two artist proofs and an edition of six prints, but that likely varies, I'm sure.

I also think Gursky is a mixed bag, but of the works that I do like, they really are exceptional. While this doesn't make an artist, he does have a signature style, and I'm not talking by virtue of the size of his prints. He has a unique vision. Yes, it's easily repeatable, and yes, many people can probably do it, but then again, no one has.

Yeah, just from viewing the latest pictures on his website in detail, I've realized that every work of his since 2009/2010 has been shot digital, likely with his Phase One/Alpa combination. It's pretty sad because high-end digital, even with its wide dynamic range and impressive pixel count, not to mention it's impressive hardware, manages to mostly look like shit, at least to my eyes. Gursky does, however, have some later standouts like Tokyo and Utah.

I wish Gursky, and Burtynsky for that matter, went back to film. I saw Burtynsky's digitally-composed Anthropocene pictures when they first came out and they looked horrible.

Gursky's "Darkroom" photo (http://m.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/dunkelkammer) is almost certainly about the apparent impending extinction of film and his discontinuation with using it. If you look at the photo closely, you'll see that many of the expiration dates are 2006/2007. Unfortunately for him, all of his very best work was done on film.

I also like Esser, but Jorg Sasse and Axel Hütte are also very interesting, not to mention the Bechers themselves, of course.

[manfrominternet]

My girlfriend actually managed to answer my original question by finding this image on Instagram:

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This is a 2017/2018 photo of Gursky working on an image not yet released of an ocean liner that he discussed in a relatively recent Financial Times article.

RIP, Gursky's Sinar F2 5x7 and Linhof Technikardan 45s/Master Technikardan 3000 4x5 cameras. :/


Anyone know which model Phase One that is? Just asking for the hell of it.

[interneg]

It's an Alpa 12 XY or something like that.

Some really nasty teal & orange going on in that picture.

[Kirk Gittings]

[QUOTE=manfrominternet;1511842]



"I wish Gursky, and Burtynsky for that matter, went back to film."

Having been at this for decades, I would have to say that the vast majority of work done in any medium is crap. Good work is always rare no matter how it is done.

[Daniel Stone]

Just like with any medium, the tools don't mean sh** if the end result is, well, sh**... Gursky doesn't deal in quantity, but quality(and even that is subjective depending on whom you talk with). Anyhow, shooting film is a chore in itself, and for someone as well-versed in the TECHNIQUE of photography, shooting high megapixel digital DOES make sense in many ways. I'm not sure how many of you have flown with holders larger than 4x5, but it can be a real pain. Not to mention flying with film, unless you have a way to not get film scanned if shipping via Fedex or UPS. I've flown with 8x10 ONCE, and that was with 5 holders, and film.

Carrying an Alpa XY, a slew of lenses and a digital back or two can be all fit into a rolling case that can be carried on easily. No film to worry about in regards to x-rays, or pesky security concerns when asking for a hand check.

A couple of hard drives for backup, or heck, now you ca just upload it all to the cloud when back to the hotel!

Horses for courses. I'm sure if Gursky felt the NEED to use film, he still would. Seems he doesn't ;)

-Dan

[manfrominternet]

Why does Gursky overwhelmingly prefer transparencies over negatives?

While watching that documentary on Gursky ("Long Shot, Close Up") creating one of his photos (Hamm, Bergwerk Ost), I noticed that he exclusively used Fuji Provia. I also noticed that in a different interview, the one where he was creating his North Korea works in 2007, the interviewer said that Gursky used Fuji 100 ASA film, which likely meant Provia or Velvia. And finally, when you zoom into this photo he took of his darkroom (https://m.andreasgursky.com/en/works/2016/dunkelkammer/zoom:1), you'll notice that practically all the film he has are transparencies/slide film.

Can any of you offer any reasons as to perhaps why Gursky almost exclusively worked with transparency, especially Fuji transparencies?

[Drew Wiley]

Ease of viewing the success of a transparency over a light box, maybe ease of scanning too. He is a serial manipulator in PS anyway, a "painter", so it really doesn't matter. Availability of certain films at certain times, and familiarity with those specific types. Interestingly, there are boxes of Portra 160VS there too, so that shoots down your notion that he only shot chromes. And there are boxes of Kodak E100VS chrome film, not just Fuji product. There are also boxes of CDUIII, which is a duplicating film of the same era. ALL these specific films are no longer made. Since he often spliced images digitally anyway, he might as well just shoot them that way in the first place. Not my cup of tea,
but it's evidently what he finds rewarding.

[manfrominternet]

Ease of viewing the success of a transparency over a light box, maybe ease of scanning too. He is a serial manipulator in PS anyway, a "painter", so it really doesn't matter. Availability of certain films at certain times, and familiarity with those specific types. Interestingly, there are boxes of Portra 160VS there too, so that shoots down your notion that he only shot chromes. And there are boxes of Kodak E100VS chrome film, not just Fuji product. There are also boxes of CDUIII, which is a duplicating film of the same era. ALL these specific films are no longer made. Since he often spliced images digitally anyway, he might as well just shoot them that way in the first place. Not my cup of tea,
but it's evidently what he finds rewarding.

Yeah, I did notice some Portra in there too. Where do you see the boxes of CDUII?

Since you clearly have much more experience than I do, if I wanted to take a 4x5 shot of the Rhine to scan and manipulate like he did in his 1996 version (https://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1996/rhein-1, not the famous Rhine II from 1999 that we all know) would you now choose negative, like Kodak Ektar, or transparency, like Fuji Provia or Velvia?

Just asking for your expertise.

[manfrominternet]

Any takers?

If I wanted to take a 4x5 shot of the Rhine to scan and manipulate like Gursky did in his 1996 version (https://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1996/rhein-1, not the famous Rhine II from 1999 that we all know) would you now choose negative, like Kodak Ektar, or transparency, like Fuji Provia or Velvia?

[Corran]

Why do you think it would matter? What quality are you looking for?

Overcast light and an overall low-contrast scene would lead me to shoot transparency if given the choice. Negative film might just be too flat in contrast. But not Velvia, if going for that somewhat desaturated look.

[manfrominternet]

I'm simply asking out of genuine curiosity. I'm also asking because I'm hoping this might reveal Gursky's choice in film (especially his use in transparency) a little more.

What current line of 4x5 negative or transparency film (Ektar or Provia/Velvia, respectively) would you experienced pros use if you were trying to copy Gursky's Rhein I or II (https://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1996/rhein-1), drum scan it, and blow it up to, say, 7.5 feet by 6 feet to look as close to his original work as possible?

[Corran]

Provia

[johnmsanderson]

Sanderski

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b46b0607e3c3a7a060eacde/1537923303420-13X7MJW50P8SQ8EZDVO7/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kBsDkK9cu3_SyTZ--r1vF4IUqsxRUqqbr1mOJYKfIPR7LoDQ9mXPOjoJoqy81S2I8N_N4V1vUb5AoIIIbLZhVYwL8IeDg6_3B-BRuF4nNrNcQkVuAT7tdErd0wQFEGFSnIxXzMyEP4oFWls1viF_rYln_Op3STWfwmpMyWFh-6tmvFXjQW8TFEDgmWG5y_sj9A/John_Sanderson_railroad-landscape-Interstate-and-tracks-Wyoming.jpg?format=2500w

[manfrominternet]

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b46b0607e3c3a7a060eacde/1537923303420-13X7MJW50P8SQ8EZDVO7/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kBsDkK9cu3_SyTZ--r1vF4IUqsxRUqqbr1mOJYKfIPR7LoDQ9mXPOjoJoqy81S2I8N_N4V1vUb5AoIIIbLZhVYwL8IeDg6_3B-BRuF4nNrNcQkVuAT7tdErd0wQFEGFSnIxXzMyEP4oFWls1viF_rYln_Op3STWfwmpMyWFh-6tmvFXjQW8TFEDgmWG5y_sj9A/John_Sanderson_railroad-landscape-Interstate-and-tracks-Wyoming.jpg?format=2500w[/QUOTE]

Beautiful. What was this shot with exactly? Negative? Transparency? Dare I say digital?

[johnmsanderson]

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b46b0607e3c3a7a060eacde/1537923303420-13X7MJW50P8SQ8EZDVO7/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kBsDkK9cu3_SyTZ--r1vF4IUqsxRUqqbr1mOJYKfIPR7LoDQ9mXPOjoJoqy81S2I8N_N4V1vUb5AoIIIbLZhVYwL8IeDg6_3B-BRuF4nNrNcQkVuAT7tdErd0wQFEGFSnIxXzMyEP4oFWls1viF_rYln_Op3STWfwmpMyWFh-6tmvFXjQW8TFEDgmWG5y_sj9A/John_Sanderson_railroad-landscape-Interstate-and-tracks-Wyoming.jpg?format=2500w

Beautiful. What was this shot with exactly? Negative? Transparency? Dare I say digital?[/QUOTE]

Thanks! 3 4x5" color negatives shot in camera using shift to record the entire cross section and then stitched in post.

[Drew Wiley]

Per the linked Gursky image, and how to simulate it : Not Velvia; too contrasty. Not Ektachrome, cause it's out of production in sheets. Provia might work. Ektar is color neg, but would work well IF you understand correct light balancing of it to avoid a cyan shift in the sky. Shoot digitally and stitch if you can stand that kind of tedious chore, and if things stay still long enough to begin with. If you want crisp big enlargements from sheet film, you need some method to keep the film truly flat in the holder.

[manfrominternet]

Before fully turning to his digital Phase One IQ4/Alpa XY/Rodenstock setup, Gursky did use a lot of Fuji Provia and transparency. I heard from a photographer who knows another photographer who somehow knows Gursky say that Gursky indeed did shoot a lot of his greatest works primarily with Fuji Provia. From 1988 to 2008, Gursky did most of his work with his 4x5 camera and, likely later, used Provia as his go-to. His huge prints that were definitely taken with his Linhof 4x5 (you can tell because of the aspect ratio of the prints) are extremely sharp. (While he shot a lot of work with his 5x7 camera, Gursky mentioned that he never shoots 8x10, save for the one Polaroid he shot in the mid-80s.)

Anyway, how did he get 4x5 Provia transparencies so sharp, sharp enough to print so large, like 8ft by 10 ft, with little loss in resolution?! Does Provia tend to drum scan better than negatives like Ektar or something?

[Chester McCheeserton]

Anyway, how did he get 4x5 Provia transparencies so sharp, sharp enough to print so large, like 8ft by 10 ft, with little loss in resolution?! Does Provia tend to drum scan better than negatives like Ektar or something?

A properly exposed chrome will beat the same speed color negative in terms of less grain and more sharpness. I use color negative because it's lower contrast, way more dynamic range, way more forgiving with exposure. But chromes are sharper and nearly grainless.

I always thought that much of Gursky's earlier work was shot on negative, because for a while I think many were optical C-prints.

Some of those 10 foot wide prints don't look that hot when you get close. Ever see the 99 cent store print up close in person? grain clumps the size of pencil erasers.

[interneg]

A properly exposed chrome will beat the same speed color negative in terms of less grain and more sharpness.

This isn't the case either in theory or practice. Neg-pos always beats pos-pos quite definitively in granularity and sharpness. It's why cinema uses/ used a neg/ pos process - there is a large amount of heavy duty maths and science from Kodak etc from the 1950's onwards as to why neg/ pos is better for many, many reasons. If you're seeing less sharpness and more grain from colour negs compared to colour positives, it's because something is going wrong in your imaging chain - and it isn't the film. The sole reason colour transparency held on for so long was that it provided an easy reference for 4-colour repro in the days before ICC profiling etc.

Gursky's prints are full of all sorts of oddities up close - artefacting etc - for a long time they were assembled on a Quantel system from the early 1990's.

[Chester McCheeserton]

This isn't the case either in theory or practice. Neg-pos always beats pos-pos quite definitively in granularity and sharpness. It's why cinema uses/ used a neg/ pos process - there is a large amount of heavy duty maths and science from Kodak etc from the 1950's onwards as to why neg/ pos is better for many, many reasons. If you're seeing less sharpness and more grain from colour negs compared to colour positives, it's because something is going wrong in your imaging chain - and it isn't the film. The sole reason colour transparency held on for so long was that it provided an easy reference for 4-colour repro in the days before ICC profiling etc.


Huh, my experience would lead me to disagree with that wholeheartedly. I'm not basing anything on heavy duty maths from kodak from the 1950s or the evolution of motion picture film, although I agree that that are many interesting parallels between the two mediums.

I'm basing what I said on looking at drum scans and prints I've seen from 4x5 chromes that have way less grain then scans I've seen from color negatives. And are much sharper. Have you looked at and compared both? Scans and prints?

I know multiple people who have chosen to continue using chromes instead of negs for those reasons. But like I said, I don't use chrome, for me the sharpness isn't worth the trade off of way less dynamic range, unless you're shooting under controlled lighting.

[interneg]

I'm basing what I said on looking at drum scans and prints I've seen from 4x5 chromes that have way less grain then scans I've seen from color negatives. And are much sharper. Have you looked at and compared both? Scans and prints?


And I've made lots of scans and inkjet/ darkroom prints from multiple source materials in all the main formats, seen innumerable different scans & darkroom prints & the Kodak research holds up in my experience. Aliasing & excessive sharpening can be a big problem with drum scans, as can inept operators. I've seen some horrid results off Heidelbergs, mainly thanks to the operator not knowing what they were doing with the unsharp mask and/ or doing the inversion in the scanner software rather than Photoshop. You'd be amazed how often doing inversions in the scanner software makes colour neg look awful compared to what it should look like.

The only reason I'd choose transparency today is for specific colour rendering, not for sharpness or fineness of grain at a given speed. And I'd shoot it in the biggest format practical for the subject matter to negate these issues

[Chester McCheeserton]

Aliasing & excessive sharpening can be a big problem with drum scans, as can inept operators. I've seen some horrid results off Heidelbergs, mainly thanks to the operator not knowing what they were doing with the unsharp mask and/ or doing the inversion in the scanner software rather than Photoshop. You'd be amazed how often doing inversions in the scanner software makes colour neg look awful compared to what it should look like.


Well you didn't choose interchrome for your name. Sounds like maybe you got a dog in this fight, I don't really.

I know what I've seen and was just trying to answer the man from the internet's question. If someone who cares more than me wants to post an MTF chart for lets say, Provia 100 vs Portra 160 and those numbers back you up, I'll cheerfully admit I'm wrong. And to repeat, I do use negative film.

But I'd protest your insinuation that I'm saying what I'm saying because I don't know how to operate a scanner, or that doing the inversion in the scanner software is degrading the quality.

Not a chance.

[manfrominternet]

Well, Andreas Gursky just released some new works, including a new version of his oh so famous Rhein II photo, aptly entitled Rhein III. What do you guys think?:

207615

Here are some other interesting new works:

Cruise
207616

Bauhaus
207617

The highway/autobahn in the picture above is suspiciously similar to the highway/autobahn in his earlier work from 1999, Toys "R" Us:
207618

[Andrew O'Neill]

Well, Andreas Gursky just released some new works, including a new version of his oh so famous Rhein II photo, aptly entitled Rhein III. What do you guys think?:

207615

Here are some other interesting new works:

Cruise
207616

Bauhaus
207617

The highway/autobahn in the picture above is suspiciously similar to the highway/autobahn in his earlier work from 1999, Toys "R" Us:
207618

I like them.

[manfrominternet]

Not that it’s really all that important, but can anyone here figure out which Linhof Master Technika Gursky is using here for his first set (2007) of North Korea shots? (This photo is from 2006/2007.) I’m not sure what year the Master Technika 3000 came out, but that’s what I originally thought this pair was. Now I’m wondering if these are possibly the original, or rather 1st version, Master Technikas.

Can anyone take a crack at this?

214199

[Corran]

Neither of those are 3000 models because the 3000 has an extra knob on the bottom of the camera.

You'd have to see if it had the internal wide angle track to know if it was a 2000. Otherwise, I think I see the ratchet lever for the front rise on the camera he is operating, making it a Master Technika.

[manfrominternet]

I'm confused about the Master Technika 2000. Aren't the 2 knobs that are usually on the top (like for the regular 1st Master Technika and the Master Technika 3000), on the top sides of the Master Technika 2000?

[Corran]

Pictures I see online seem to show both options. Not sure but maybe some pics are just wrong. I saw eBay listing of the 2000 with the side top knobs so you are probably correct.

[gmfotografie]

the ship was photographed with an alpa xy - back i guess a 100mp by phase
so i guess as vitali switched to alpa and digibacks most of them do this -( struth, brueck - i dont know)
https://www.nwzonline.de/kultur/papenburg-duesseldorf-kultur-weltstar-verwandelt-kreuzfahrtschiff-in-kunst_a_32,0,3566067963.html

[manfrominternet]

This is probably nearly impossible to answer, but can anyone take a guess at what camera he's using here? Looks like there's a dial on the left-top side of the camera and a 3-way bubble level in the middle. (This image was taken in 2007/2008, if that helps.)
236167