Product Description
A Japanese power plant, dilapidated slums, the patterned facades of an apartment complex in Paris--in the work of German art photographer Andreas Gursky, born in 1955 in Leipzig, both private dwellings and the domains of industrial and political power are made into sometimes awe-inspiring and always overpowering forces of urban life. Gursky's signature mix of epic sweep and extreme detail is ideally suited to the portrayal of large-scale architecture, eliciting its most salient features: The capacity to dwarf, to impress, to alienate and to daunt. Where many of us will habitually blank out architectural environments which cannot be accommodated by the naked eye, Gursky's approach is to photograph them in order to render them comprehensible: "My preference for clear structures is the result of my desire, perhaps illusory, to keep track of things and maintain my grip on the world." Architecture is a collection of breathtaking images by the world-famous photographer, taken between 1988 and the present day, and treating all aspects of architectural structure, from the inside out. Each of the 75 color photographs is accompanied by commentary by renowned German authors Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Elisabeth Bronfen, Sonja Fessel, Paul Nizon, Alfred Nordmann, Mirjam Schaub, Rudolf Schmitz, Monika Schmitz-Emans, Peter Schneemann and Thomas Zaunschirm. The resulting conjunction of text and image attractively demonstrates the depth and breadth of Gursky's concept of architecture.

About the Author
Andreas Gursky was born in 1955 in Leipzig, East Germany, and studied at the prestigious Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf. His first solo gallery show was held at Galerie Johnen & Schottle, Cologne, in 1988. A solo museum exhibition followed the next year, at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld. By this time, Gursky was increasing the scale of his photographs, and by the 90s was using the largest photographic paper available; by 2000 he was combining sheets to make images larger still. In the early 1990s Gursky began to use digital technology for retouching and altering negatives, and more recently he has produced work entirely fabricated by computer. Gursky has had recent solo exhibitions at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, and White Cube, London. A major mid-career retrospective traveled the world in 2001, with U.S. stops at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.