Andreas Gursky Exhibition

I went an ongoing exhibition of Andreas Gursky in Hayward Gallery with my friend’s family.

The 16 months boy said to have started to walk this week.

For the boy,  it was the first experience to be in a huge space and a slippery floor.  And he seemed to be very much fond of that and enjoying.

Gursky’s huge prints are amazingly sharp and detailed —– I was wondered what size of camera he had used ?  —– Then as I discovered that they were composed from many photos etc, I lost interest.   I rather like to see such work from graphic designers.

 Photo above said to be a landscape of Tokyo though, houses standing next by next without hedges nor the gaps.  Of course, no such place could exists. (Think, how people can access to their door ? — Where is the street ?) = It’s mean, the houses in this photo were stitched-up one by one leaving no gap ! = This IS an utter fake.  Not only that, if his image of Tokyo in its “Reality” was like this, I have to doubt his intelligence. —– You can find the lords of straight photos of Tokyo in the Net, not mention National Geographic kind.   😀

Photography is the art of “I’ve seen it and I captured” —– The primary existence is the subject. Once we started to make-up and project our own image, its became a business of the designer or even a painter, not of a Photographer.

It seemed that Gursky’s interest were immense pile-up or swarms of the subjects, hence putting together and repeating many images, were natural approach though it was the commercial graphic designer’s approach.  Impress and overwhelm the others with “immense amount” were noting but a cheap trick, easy exploitation of the digital editing.

It was the snow outside.   (The Photos here were taken by either Canon fish-eye zoom 8~15mm or homemade Helicoid-B lens on Sony A7R.)

PS :  Next day I read the booklet of the exhibition and realized that Gursky applied all those stitch work / digital manipulation for the “sake of reality” and later, he wanted to have painterly effect blah blah (by taking picture of the Turner’s paintings   :-D) ….. though, very simple answer to him was that his image was not pretty,  but just messy = does anybody want to have his photo on your wall, other than a sake of snob ?   😀

To compose the image, Approach from the pattern is easy, because it can be done in logical thinking.   But esthetic beauty only come from the deep intuitive sense.  So, its easy to see why Gursky resorted with those pattern or repeating expansion in mass.  But it IS not the art, but an industrial production.   ( Or was that cynical Modern Art ?)

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