ANDREAS GURSKY (B. 1955)

"Gursky's image of the contemporary is familiar, even banal. 'Globalization'-our umbrella term for the relentless process that has created this well-lit world of easy travel, abundant goods, international markets, inescapable brand names, regimented grids and sparkling surfaces, all of it smelling of money-is itself by now a cliché. Few of us have traveled as widely as Gursky and still fewer have observed the internal workings of the stock exchange at Hong Kong or the Siemens plant at Karlsruhe. But our omnivorous, well-oiled professional image-industry has processed, packaged, and delivered all of this and more. Gursky's originality lies in the vividness with which he has distilled compelling images from the plenitude of this commercialized image-world."

-Peter Galassi, Andreas Gursky, New York, 2001, p. 39