10 Photos from Famous German Photographer Andreas Gursky | Compositional Genius

[@davidtidswell8374]

Beautiful photos and insightful commentary. Couldn't ask for better.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thank you that is very kind! I have a lot of future episodes coming in this style. Glad you found it of use!

[@sfjessy1]

Andreas Gursky’s work is really worth seeing in person, you will get lost in the detail. Beautiful.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Fingers crossed it tours here some day soon!

[@davemenard5089]

I appreciate the use of the wording "post-production" or "development". It just sounds so much more positive and living than [processing]. You are exceptional for this.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thank you Dave. I think what Gursky does goes beyond what I would consider processing (it sounds like just putting a photo through a conveyor belt of simple adjustments). It's definitely an act of production or development of the photographs and ideas. Thanks for commenting!

[@lugentaubner6853]

7:19 The four figures are the four most recent german chancellors in random order. from left to right: Schröder, Schmidt, Merkel, Kohl

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thank you for sharing!

[@Ali-sj5pn]

Great video beautiful photos

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thank you Ali, wholeheartedly recommend a visit to his website to see more!

[@Ava-ph9vv]

This video came up on my feed. I enjoyed the commentary and subbed. I wish you success with the channel.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thank you so much Ava! I'm glad you enjoyed it. The channel will be a bit of a mixed bag but all photography discussion and this series will run as long as the channel does :) There's so much great photography out there.

[@dimesdede]

I also found his photos very fascinating because I thought the situations photographed had actually existed. Until I found out that he massively edits his pictures using Photoshop. The jackets in the mine, for example, were multiplied using Photoshop. A lot of things were stamped out on the Rhine. So I wouldn't say he's a photographer, but rather a Photoshop artist.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

I'd say he is both, he still had to take the photographs to begin with in order to manipulate them in photoshop :) But yes it is totally understandable to colour how we see work that is manipulated in this way. Thanks for sharing!

[@seoulrydr]

Thanks for the vid. In the 2nd to last image, I believe instead of the light area being a mast, it may be the space between the two directions of an overpass. unnecessary commentary to say the least; but oh well.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

I think it's interesting for people to know what is contributing to an almost abstract image. Thanks for the additional information!

[@myllerfilm]

And the object in the lower right corner is the body of a fish, which are attracted in masses by feeding during tourist boat trips.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

@@myllerfilm nice detail thank you.

[@panosstathatos9449]

Very good intro to his work.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thank you and sorry for the late reply! It got caught in the KZbin comment filter which I will check more studiously from now on!

[@olssond569]

Appreciate your work!

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thanks Olsson!

[@hauke3644]

I‘m a fan of Andreas Gursky since I have stood in front of one of his pictures in an exhibition, not knowing the name before. The simplicity, detail, overall technical perfection and obvious message really striked me.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

That must have been quite awe inspiring given the scale of his work! Thanks for sharing the experience :)

[@edoardofrezet6671]

Thanks for this video, very interesting content delivered in a very simple form. As far as I'm concerned, analyzing pictures is the best way to improve his own's. I hope many more videos of this kind will come. Meanwhile, thanks again!

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Hi Edoardo! Thank you for the feedback. Yes definitely lots more videos in this particular series as there are so many photographers I want to share, both legendary and contemporary. I am away for a bit in the coming two months but I also want to have more segments with other photographers when I get back also :) Have a good one!

[@walkingmanvideo9455]

Andreas's real name is Where' Waldo.........................Jokes aside, his photos are fantastic. Clearly he was able to gain permission to photograph the interiors of the locations, something which perhaps people didnt attempt as they may have thought it was impossible to get permission. Everyone of us have a Gersky style image in our albums.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thanks for contributing Walking Man! Yes you don't get if you never ask :)

[@hans1187]

What is also interesting about Gursky's work is the strange relationship between Capitalism and its most articulated critics. "The most expensive" photograph, being pure Capitalism, somehow undermines its own "raison d'être".

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Great observation. It'd be interesting to see Gursky's view on the art world through his work.

[@scottweaverphotovideo]

The grocery store photo makes me wonder... perhaps he just likes candy bars. Like Freud said, sometimes a pencil is just a pencil.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Well photographers do often gravitate towards what they like. That said when reviewed with the greater body of work I am not sure candy was the motivation :)

[@spyroslambrou7603]

The perfect example of what happens when the art market system decides that an artist is a genius lol.

[@pepetrueno8722]

A trading floor is one of the most chaotic places in the world…

[@MockUPie]

I wonder why speak so much of "capture" while all of is newer work (at least starting with Paris Montparnasse in 1993, including Rhein II from 1999) are composits and only came into existence with manipulations, "post processing" on the computer. Of course all the pictures have real places as inspiration and work with photographs of that places as material, but these images are exaggerations of the concrete and "factual". There is no 99 cent store like in the picture (so why to speak of depth of field, when it is not a single photograph taken by one exposure through one lens?), traders at the stockmarket wear color coded clothes related to their special function, but you have to expect that Gursky recolored them for compositional purposes.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Great comment. I think the use of capture is highly dependent on context. It could relate to capturing a photograph in terms of a single exposure which is how it is often used. There is also the idea of capturing a moment, capturing an idea, capturing the essence of an issue. But realistically it's just a part of my ingrained language of photography. While I know a little about some of the images I talk about, I try to come to them as raw as possible, where I can, because I want to experience them as I might in a gallery (or even when judging a photographic competition). To draw a comparison - I'd like to listen to a musical piece before I read the lyrics. I'd like to view an artwork in a gallery before reading the didactic. I'd like to see a magician perform their trick before I know how it is achieved. I want to, as much as possible, have a raw response to a piece before being free to think about the mechanics of it and ultimately be led to a conclusion - helped by members of the audience like yourself. Obviously complete naivety is not possible when you are experienced in many areas of the broad topic and industry. Thanks for contributing more information, I knew obviously that many of the pieces were composite and Andreas is clearly a master of post-production, but was not aware of the exact nature of 99 cent, and approached the discussion around how it could be created in the real world as much as possible. Thanks again for commenting :)

[@j3ffn4v4rr0]

​@@MattTalksPhotography Frankly, while I appreciated watching this informative video, calling an photograph a "capture" has always made me cringe. The original connotation of, as you just implied, capturing a moment in time in the form of an image, came into popularity with the rise of digital photography and the immediacy of viewing an image captured moments before. We didn't have that experience with film, and we never called transparencies, negatives, or prints "captures." So, even though using a verb as a noun is generally poor vocabulary, it made sense. But now it doesn't. Digital photography ate itself years ago. You can justify using the word "capture" by saying it's highly dependent on context, and listing various ways it might be intended...but then, you're only proving my point, by employing a word that's distinguished by its ambiguity.

[@jhope1923]

Bahrain 1 is heavily edited.

[@arminpp9681]

Left probably Gerhard Schröder, right Helmut Kohl and smoking Helmut Schmidt. All at a certain time Bundeskanzler of Germany

[@MattTalksPhotography]

yes thank you!

[@v_stands_for_value124]

I think everyone tends to over analize those photos only because the photographer is famous, if those were taken yesterday by me or you people would be like "cool" *scrolls up*

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Unknown photographers often receive significant attention by submitting work of excellent vision to various competitions or panel discussions. If a new photographer produced Gursky's work, without him having existed first, they would become well known for sure. How do you think Gursky got famous after all?

[@jackdarren9210]

👍

[@georgb.920]

The picture Sha Tin (1994) is artistically unsatisfactory. If you are at a horse race, you pay attention to other people the horses and the surroundings and avoid looking at the bleak empty sky. By making a mistake in his composition, is the photographer trying to market the image as art? Is his art defined by torturing the expectation for a successful composition? I like El Ejido (2017) very much.

[@MattTalksPhotography]

Thanks for sharing your opinion. I think the inclusion of the sky is quite deliberate. This isn't an image about a horse race, but an image that speaks to the society hosting the horse race and its place in a greater context. Of course, one can have an opinion about whether that is successful or not, but it's absolutely deliberate.