Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
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.
Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
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.
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Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
Here's something I read up on Gursky's "Tokyo" photo: https://www.ft.com/content/2d52904c-...7-5465a6ce1a00 (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?
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Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
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,
Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
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.
Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
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.
Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
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.
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
Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
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...
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Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
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...
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Re: The Camera and Technique of Andreas Gursky (Then And Now)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Chester McCheeserton
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.