Lot 22 D

Gursky's thematic worlds, his technical photographic approach based on digital manipulation, and his geographic range have changed so enormously over the years that his early analogue works, created around and after 1987, now seem to have been created by a very different, 'private' Gursky. These early photographs of the artist, taken with the medium-format camera he acquired in 1987 but still printed in small or medium format, are much sought-after by collectors today.
The dreary agricultural landscape in winter - one of those typical Lower Rhine landscapes that often have a leaden atmosphere in the cold season - is a work of art that was created in the immediate vicinity of Gursky's Düsseldorf place of work. It is a photograph with a romantic undertone, reminiscent of one of Claude Lorrain's 'classical landscape vedutas' from the 17th century. [...] The matt, reduced, often barely tangible, yet intense coloration emphasises the atmospheric-spatiality of the pictures and undoubtedly contributes to the characteristic impression of 'timelessness'. However, Andreas Gursky is an eminently contemporary artist who approaches external reality using contemporary means to create images whose silent urgency can reflect the fullness, and also the emptiness, of the phenomena'. (quoted from Zdenek Felix/Saskia Bos, preface, in: Zdenek Felix (ed.), Andreas Gursky. Works 1984-1993, exhib.cat. Deichtorhallen Hamburg i.a., Munich 1994, p. 6)