ANDREAS GURSKY
Andreas Gursky

Hardbound, 128 pages
2008, Hatje Cantz
Text by Beate Sontgen, Nina Zimmer

From the Publisher:
Famed worldwide for his epically-proportioned photographs, Andreas Gursky is one of very few contemporary artists able to represent cultures of excessive information--which he does through images of supermarket wares, crowds, trash, architecture and nature. The extreme detail of Gursky's final image--achieved by digital restructuring--produces a vertiginous effect on the viewer, as it oscillates between total representation and total abstraction. It could be said that Gursky updates the eighteenth-century sublime for our times.

This publication surveys the artist's most recent creations, on display at the renowned Kunstmuseum Basel throughout the winter of 2007/2008. Two new groups of works in particular, one on Formula One races and the other on the famous Arirang Festival (a closely-choreographed mass spectacle in North Korea's capital of Pyongyang), are gathered here.