Andreas Gursky, Immense.

Until September 23, 2001 ¹ in Madrid, at the Parque del Retiro Reina Sofia Museum ( MNCARS ), One can witness a vast collection of photographs collected from the twenty-five years of occupation by Germany's Andreas Gursky (Leipzig, Germany, 1955), considered by many one of the most important photographers in the contemporary artistic production. They think at least the MOMA in New York, which organizes and hosts this retrospective formed by 59 images, most dating from 1990 and 2000.

An exhibition.

Go to an exhibition predisposed to enjoy is something that fortunately no one is capable of doing. We always have the exciting uncertainty of the future and so our reaction, if it happens, it will always be pristine and with luck, intense. For this reason have to understand both literally and figuratively the heading of this review, because when you visit this exhibit you can see some great photographs of a huge photographer, at least, when you write these words so he thought. The visit to show them that this sample would be profitable for their interests me is daunting task, but let me talk about things that at least make them appreciate the opportunity to go through the Reina Sofia to see, without doubt, one of the most lucid and Rigorous collections of contemporary photography that currently exist in the world.

A walk to see.

We all thought that a photograph is an object that can manipulate our hands and eyes to cover completely. To start with, in this exhibition we can find pictures of five meters wide, a figure that might go unnoticed if not extended by the presence of obsessive one of the favorites Gursky: human agglomerations. Either a boxing match, a concert technology, Hongkong's headquarters in Shanghai Bank, circulatory or a knot of Cairo, where hundreds of executives are immortalized licnobios, dancers tattooed night, fans pugilismo idlers, powdery vehicles from one country and we can before that crowd, or in the crowd?.
In it, because both factors together (size and reason) increase the feeling of being an active part in these agglomerations. Suddenly in the exhibition we will be walking, which is not often done by looking at photographs, because the body has been transported to the eyes to reduce the image size to separate from her. Then our natural appetite to see, to degenerate or become voyeurism, we will push to get closer to photography to breathe on it and see what that before long, now it mastered in detail.
But beyond the choice of motive or the size of the photographs, the trigger for our enjoyment is being able to feel ubiquitous with the work of Gursky. The source of all lies not in contemplation of the work, nor in the photograph as object, but in the place where it puts us in the odd feeling pleasurable and pervasive feeling of being simultaneously here and there, of being and not to be. Gursky treated the crowd even in his state of dormancy; the void for him is the possibility of full, the being is the possibility of not being. The look is at last the chance to see.

The generation of the Art of Seeing.

A certain taste for a description unpretentious, inherited from the German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), along with a way of looking at itself as a refined technique in handling the camera optical bench, breaking up the vague assumption that these attitudes and capabilities were not miscible and, if so, the results would necessarily be distant to the artistic. Observing that important to remember that the ostracism to the tradition of documentary photography was submitted by an opinion of the guardians of high culture in times where the school photo 'inherently artistic' is voluntarily separating from the "documentary engineers' who like Gursky and others their colleagues in the Kunstakademie, were engaged in healthy exercise Art of Seeing. Heavy cameras that are hindering a look elusive and fast, contemplation rather than the compulsive movement of the eye, a dismissal inherent in the flâneur cosmopolitan apparent lack of operational ... All this creates a legacy of images with which we may be in luck if enjoys seeing the ways of others.
Finally, as anecdotal information, there are large catalogs that illustrate mediocre exhibitions and vice versa. This is not the case of a well-edited catalog, with all images and text put forward by the historian Peter Galassi. The book is a gem, it publishes the MOMA and is also huge in size and price: 7000 pesetas and 34 x 31 cms.

Actualzación of August 10, 2007: There is much literature on his work and multitude of images on the web Andreas Gursky. But one of the many outstanding values of his work is the choice of format that plays to their pleas. When this article was written, Gursky still did not have the strange honor of being the author photography of the most expensive in history , Who snatched a scepter Edward Steichen .