Dawit Samson- Weekly Artist Post 5

Andreas Gursky

1.) Andreas Gursky, the world's greatest living photographer, captures and sometimes manipulates life in bird's eye view. When taking a photo, he well distanced from the subject, but because of his use of large formats and high resolution cameras a viewer still can see the tiny details in the pictures. These three photos are all geometric in a sense that they are all symmetrical. The colors, though only a few are seen, help with the symmetry. In the bottom photo the red and white are on different sides causing the photo to have a line down the middle. 

2.) Gursky wants to view the world in a different way, a bird's eye view. He manages to get this by distancing himself, and being elevated in the air. This helps the theme of capturing the whole  instead of small details, but still one can pick out the smallest details due to the large prints he produces. The perspective he gives the viewer shows how small humans are in this world.

3.) His use of large format pictures and by constructing reality appeals to my eye. The uniqueness of the photos, the size and the small details that inhabit the photo, the color, the geometry involved all make the picture more appealing. The first photo is a good example of all these attributes I listed, resulting in having multiple meaning; one of them being how us humans are like atoms.