Andreas Gursky

Biography

Andreas Gursky is a German photographer born in 1955 in Leipzig, who relocated with his family to West Germany and now lives and works in Düsseldorf. He studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, becoming part of the influential Düsseldorf School of Photography, which brought a systematic, documentary approach to depicting industrial and architectural subjects. Gursky is widely considered one of the most important photographers working today, known for monumental, often several-meters-wide prints that digitally composite and edit imagery to depict mass consumerism, crowds, architecture, and the sweeping scale of globalization. His practice deliberately blurs the line between documentary photography and constructed image-making, since many of his large-format works are assembled digitally from multiple source photographs rather than captured in a single frame, raising enduring questions about truth and representation in the photographic image. Among his best-known works are Rhein II and 99 Cent II Diptychon, both of which achieved record-breaking prices at auction and helped establish photography as a major category within contemporary art markets. At Art Basel's Zero 10 sector in Basel in 2026, presented by Sprüth Magers, Gursky showed Ocean V (2010), one of his monumental deep-blue composite oceanscapes derived from satellite and photographic imagery, widely regarded as among the most market-significant pieces in the sector. Gursky's work is held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Tate, the Centre Pompidou, and MoMA.