Andreas Gursky: Early Landscapes

About

From the moment he started making photographs to the present day, the landscape has captivated Andreas Gursky. This exhibition at Spruth Magers London is the first to focus on a group of important early landscapes from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Predating Gursky's extensive use of digital technology, and characterised by what the artist has called an 'extraterrestrial' perspective, the pictures are titled simply and directly after the geographical location where they were taken.

Gursky's early landscapes provide the viewer with the concrete experience of a known place as well as what Martin Hentschel has called a 'mental image … that has been passed down to us by the history of painting and inscribed into our collective memory'. The pictures conjure both a topography and a structure; while Alba (1989) taps into our deepest sense of what a landscape might express, from ancient idylls to Caspar David Friedrich, the photograph also depicts a mundane evening in Italy.