Photographer Magazine (2001)
I have expressed in the past my joy that a good critic like Mr. Nikos Xidakis takes photography seriously. It is the second time that I take the opportunity from an article of his in this magazine, which hosts both of us, and I must admit that I enjoy this informal dialogue. In a previous note of his about the photographer Andreas Gursky, he expressed a relative reservation, or rather a disappointment, about this photographer's work, which he states he loves and admires, when he learned that his photographs are digitally processed and altered. He then considered that he had misread the photographs as windows to the world whereas they are images, thereby implying that his admiration was retrieved, possibly with a different content.
Andreas Gursky is undoubtedly a clever and capable photographer. His work constitutes an interesting and structured proposal in the world of contemporary photography. Gursky has seen his sharp rise to the top of the artistic pyramid in recent years and has even managed to sell his work for high prices (over 200 million drachmas per photograph), which mainly contributed to the establishment and spread of his fame. Most of my young students admire his work. My admiration, as much as it exists, is more influenced by his ability than by his photographic sensitivity and authenticity. Compared to most of his successful and famous contemporaries in the modern artistic landscape, he significantly excels because he managed to maintain his photographic direction even though he flirts with postmodern and conceptual fashion. Consequently, the underlying reservations I have about his work also represent a relative acceptance on my part, since I feel that any objection, overt or covert, is unnecessary for many of today's famous photographers, since everything is so obviously simplistic. After all, as Winogrand once told a journalist, "if you chew on a cardboard and like it, I can't say anything."
Gursky's success is based on two pillars of contemporary photography: simplicity and impressiveness, rules of the all-powerful communication. It's true that Gursky uses these rules with European discretion, allowing them to function and yield results in a secondary manner. His photographs do not offend, they have a graphic intensity, do not (directly) mimic painting, do not philosophize – virtues that make them precious in the current stream of photographic verbosity and foolishness.
However, they avoid any internal substance, whether in terms of content or form. The large sizes of his images (all his fans would agree that the sizes are a significant element of his charm and high prices). Impressive symmetry and reproduction perfection, which is most often "improved" with digital interventions. Many small-sized depicted people or objects (something that made a foreign critic compare him to Brueghel – please!). Themes that seem to be related to today's world, from chicken farms to traffic jams in cars, interiors or exteriors of public buildings, or even two paintings by Turner (something that made the above critic compare him to this particular painter, assuming he admires him!). In short, elements that are digestible, understandable, decorative, and (in a restrained way it's true) impressive. With such technically flawless results, with such sizes, with such superficial themes, with such decorative use of color, and with such an efficient projection system, it's probably not surprising (!) the prices of his works. After all, anything that costs 200 million deserves our admiration.
The problem lies when some try to draw emotion from these works. And I do not mean emotional exaltation. I refer to artistic, photographic emotion. The one that provokes the work of Walker Evans, when one perceives (and this does not happen at first) the substantial photographic proposal in the reproduction (and transformation) of his own everyday life. The one that provokes a part of the work of Gursky's classmate, Thomas Struth, when he photographs portraits and buildings (not so much his museums and not at all, absolutely not, his flowers).
If genius, sincerity, and emotion coexisted, then the construction or accompanying rationale would not matter. Just as they should not matter in any significant work. And the revelation that the depicted has undergone any alteration or intervention by any chemical or digital means would not interest us, nor touch us. Unfortunately, however, the construction of the work and the rationale accompanying it are for many young photographers a primary goal. The pained peasant woman whom Evans photographed in front of the wooden fence was laughing heartily, and it was Evans who imposed her to become gloomy (a major intervention in the flow of things). However, our emotion and our admiration were not diminished in the slightest, possibly even increased. If, therefore, the photographer himself confessed today that he had used digital intervention for a similar intervention, we would still overlook it, since the result exceeded its construction. In photography, making images is not enough. And the fellow columnist was right to look for awindow. Only that the significant work is one where the window to the outside world is simultaneously a window to the photographer's inner world. That is, when these worlds give birth to a third, composite world. However, this is something that Gursky has not yet mastered. Perhaps he has not even been concerned with it. If the prices of his works on the market decrease, he might start looking for it. Because he seems to be a capable photographer.
Plato Rivellis