Andreas Gursky Photo Analysis

"99 Cent II"

This iconic image was taken by the world-renowned photographer Andreas Gursky who lives and works in Germany. This image is the artwork 99 Cent II Diptychon from 2001 and is a two-part photograph.

The work depicts an interior of a supermarket showing the numerous aisles depicting the goods that are stored on the shelves resulting in a colorful piece of work. The work is digitally altered to reduce perspective. The photograph is a chromogenic color print or c-print. The image was also mounted onto acrylic glass. The photographs have a size of 2.07 by 3.37 metres. The photographer has created an expressive image by using a various colour palette and there is no limited tonal value. Also This photograph is based on a series of lines, creating an abstract rather than representational image.

Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky was born in 1955, he grew up in Düsseldorf, the only child of a successful commercial photographer, learning the tricks of that trade before he had finished high school. In the late 1970s, he spent two years in nearby Essen at the Folkwangschule (Folkwang School), which Otto Steinert had established as West Germany’s leading training ground for professional photographers, especially photojournalists. At Essen, Gursky encountered photography's documentary tradition, a sophisticated art of unembellished observation, whose earnest outlook was remote from the artificial enticements of commercial work. Finally, in the early 1980s, he studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie (State Art Academy) in Düsseldorf, which thanks to artists such as Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter had become the hotbed of Germany's vibrant postwar avant-garde. There Gursky learned the ropes of the art world and mastered the rigorous method of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose photographs had achieved prominence within the Conceptual and Minimal art movements.