Andreas Gursky in Basel

In Basel yesterday to have a look at the Andreas Gursky exhibition. I knew little about his work other than that the prints were very big and that one of them holds the current all time record for a photograph sold at auction (99c Diptych II - 3.4m dollars). So I confess to going along with rather jaundiced expectations, but as a photographer I wanted to judge for myself what all the fuss was about.

It is easy to form preconceived ideas about work you have never seen in person. There are some types of artwork which must be experienced face to face, rather than through reproductions. It makes a big difference to see works in an exhibition setting, especially with photographers where the style and intent is often only apparent from seeing a body of work arranged and selected. I experienced a similar thing with the large canvases of Mark Rothko, which have a strange almost physical resonance when you are in their presence, and look just plain stupid on the printed page. So it was with Gursky.

There are 25 recent works in the exhibition. Yes they are big, but their big-ness is not a result of just making the image bigger. Although many are manipulated and are composed of multiple images, on the whole they are representational and show us real views and situations. However they are views of real life that we never really see ourselves, because they encompass huge areas of space that the eye doesn't normally scan. In addition many, but not all, are taken from viewpoints not available to you and me (cranes, helicopters).

You can look at the pictures from a normal viewing distance, some meters away, this often produces an abstract effect, it is like looking at a landscape from very far away. As you move in closer it as if you were scanning that same landscape with a pair of binoculars. All the pictures are crammed with details that you only see on close inspection, and from a viewpoint where the entire composition is no longer available. In some of the images the detail is just that - small details multiplied countlessly, such as an image of a cycle race (Tour de France), or a vast archipelago of small islands dotted here and there with the traces of human occupation. In his recent F1 Pit Stop pictures, they are again crammed, but this time with activities rather than fine-ness of detail - so much going on.

I might have ascribed this to a certain technique which impresses the first time you see it, but becomes tedious. However the thing that won me over to the exhibition, and the work, is the variety that he brings to the subjects. Some motifs are repeated - the pit-stops for example, but in that case this only reinforces the power of the image - identical situations, but slightly different in each. There are many ways to look at this. An obvious one is that the comment is about the rigorous procedure required to refuel and change the tyres, how it is performed again and again, by different groups of people, and the visual results are almost identical, but each has it's own characteristics. Aside from these series, and similar ones from open-air gatherings in Pyong-Yang, the exhibition is, as I said, fascinating in it's diversity. An image of a church interior contrasts a group of tiny figures with the huge stained glass windows (I'm not sure if it's an actual church interior). A photograph of the Bahrain F1 circuit in the desert looks at first site like a freely made gouache abstract, and only on close inspection reveals its true nature. Interior pictures of stock exchanges bustle with movement and energy. The interior of a nightclub provides an endless succession of groups of people under a sci-fi stage where small screens or mirrors reflect individual parts of the action.

The images are all digitally processed to subtly, or dramatically alter the colours and colour balance which gives a slight technical style to them, but while some people make a lot of this, I think it's a secondary effect compared to the content.

So I was surprised and enjoyed the exhibition a lot - I can recommend it. However you need to shut out the effects of the "Art Market" when you go and see something like this - otherwise you won't see the details for dollar bills.