Andreas Gursky
[Photographer, b. 1955, Leipzig, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf.]

 In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical. Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what’s behind something. 
 Since the photographic medium has been digitized, a fixed definition of the term “photography” has become impossible. 
 A word is worth a thousand images. 
 My preference for clear structures [within my photographic practice] is the result of my desire, perhaps illusory, to keep track of things and maintain my grip on the world. 
 I stand at a distance, like a person who comes from another world. 
 I read a picture not for what’s really going on there, I read it more for what is going on in our world generally. 
 Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine cannot be obtained in situ; a fictitious construction was required to provide an accurate image of a modern river. (On his photograph Rhein II) 
 Any claims on the truth in my pictures are only to be answered in the sense that a particular event did in fact happen and did take place in the here and now. 
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