About the work
"Since the early 1990s, Andreas Gursky has been assembling his photographic material into large tableaux on the computer. For the Becher student, this does not contradict a documentary approach. His aim is to make reality visible with his edited photographs. The large-format photograph Greeley, for example, shows the cattle yards of Greeley, Colorado, on an expansive plain. The cows remain there before being transported to the slaughterhouses in Chicago. The photograph has such a depth of field that all the details of the animals are clearly visible across the entire panorama. At the same time, the plain is structured by a grid of fences and roads that stand out in white against the background and extend to the horizon when viewed from the air."
Barbara Engelbach, in: Museum Ludwig Köln, 1959-2007: Künstler und Fotografien. 2007, S. 146-147
About the artist
born 1955 in Leipzig
lives and works in Düsseldorf
Andreas Gursky comes from a family of advertising photographers. Both his grandfather and his father practiced this profession. Following this path, Gursky studied visual communication at the University of Essen from 1978 to 1981. Following this, Gursky moved to the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where he studied under Bernd Becher, whose master student he was from 1985 to 1987. The group of Becher's students Axel Hütte, Jörg Sasse, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer and Thomas Ruff would later coin the term "Düsseldorf School of Photography".
In 2010, the photo artist himself was appointed Professor of Fine Art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He has been an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2007 and a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts since 2012.
Today, Andreas Gursky is one of the most important photographers internationally.