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Lot Essay
With its monumental size and highly saturated colors, Andreas Gursky’s Dubai World I encapsulates the sprawling effect of globalism on the natural envi ronment. The group of islands set amidst and azure blue sea makes reference to the Dubai World project, an artificial archipelago to mimic the shape of a world map. While the content of this photograph does raise discussions with regards to the artist’s attitude towards globalization, what governs our visual experience lies in the role of technology and digital manipulation. To reach the desired effect, Gursky consciously composed the work so that it conveys an experience alternating between the microstructure and the macrostructure.
When viewing this work from a distance, one gets an almost unequivocal overview of the coastal sea. The small islands, marked by a pristine whiteness against the contrasting blue waters, vary in shape and size, their distancing creating an irregular visual rhythm. From the vantage point of the viewer, the islands in the near sight also appear more tilted than those from afar. Different from Gursky’s many other works, in which pictorial composition is structured around parallel and repeated motifs, Dubai World I is more kinetic and varied in character. When viewed from a distance, the water flows create variations of depth: the shallow waters appear in lighter blues, whereas the deeper waters have darker colors.
The experience from close-up is as enthralling as viewing from a distance. One notices the surprising, almost extreme, resolution of the photograph: the details do not appear as “pixels,” but rather as streams of colors that illuminate the consciousness of viewing. This point-of-view, moreover, invites the viewer to temporarily forget the content, thus becoming aware of the islands’ abstract qualities and the interactions between the captured scene and its pictorial support.
Gurky’s interest in exploring the interplay of micro and macrostructures in photographs arises partly from his own investigation into the medium’s limitations as well as from his studies under the renown photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf in the early 1980s. Situated in the modernist (sometimes postmodern) tradition, Gurkey’s works challenge the structural and aesthetics possibilities of small black-and-white photographs, while retaining the attention to macroscopic compositions. The postproduction manipulation functions as an important process that conjoins Gursky’s visions into fruition. From small to large, black-and-white to highly saturated, homogenous to heterogeneous, his work displays an awareness of the manipulability of the photographic medium through the beautifully composed landscape of Dubai.
When viewing this work from a distance, one gets an almost unequivocal overview of the coastal sea. The small islands, marked by a pristine whiteness against the contrasting blue waters, vary in shape and size, their distancing creating an irregular visual rhythm. From the vantage point of the viewer, the islands in the near sight also appear more tilted than those from afar. Different from Gursky’s many other works, in which pictorial composition is structured around parallel and repeated motifs, Dubai World I is more kinetic and varied in character. When viewed from a distance, the water flows create variations of depth: the shallow waters appear in lighter blues, whereas the deeper waters have darker colors.
The experience from close-up is as enthralling as viewing from a distance. One notices the surprising, almost extreme, resolution of the photograph: the details do not appear as “pixels,” but rather as streams of colors that illuminate the consciousness of viewing. This point-of-view, moreover, invites the viewer to temporarily forget the content, thus becoming aware of the islands’ abstract qualities and the interactions between the captured scene and its pictorial support.
Gurky’s interest in exploring the interplay of micro and macrostructures in photographs arises partly from his own investigation into the medium’s limitations as well as from his studies under the renown photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf in the early 1980s. Situated in the modernist (sometimes postmodern) tradition, Gurkey’s works challenge the structural and aesthetics possibilities of small black-and-white photographs, while retaining the attention to macroscopic compositions. The postproduction manipulation functions as an important process that conjoins Gursky’s visions into fruition. From small to large, black-and-white to highly saturated, homogenous to heterogeneous, his work displays an awareness of the manipulability of the photographic medium through the beautifully composed landscape of Dubai.