Andreas Gursky
[Photographer, b. 1955, Leipzig, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf.]
I believe that there’s also a certain form of abstraction in my early landscapes: for example, I often show human figures from behind and thus the landscape as observed “through” a second lens.
Gerhard Richter
[Artist, b. 1932, Dresden, lives in Düsseldorf.]
When I paint from a photograph, conscious thinking is eliminated. I don’t know what I am doing... The photograph has an abstraction of its own, which is not easy to see through.
Raoul Hausmann
[Artist, b. 1886, Vienna, d. 1971, Limoges, France.]
Having invented the static, simultaneous and purely phonetic poem, the Dadaists applied the same principles to pictorial representation. They were the first to use photography as material to create, with the aid of structures that were very different, often anomalous and with antagonistic significance, a new entity which tore from the chaos of war and revolution an entirely new image; and they were aware that their method possessed a propaganda power which their contemporaries had not the courage to exploit...
(1931)
Alfred Stieglitz
[Photographer and curator, b. 1864, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1946, New York.]
Just as we stand before the door of a new social era, so we stand in art too before a new medium of expression—the true medium (abstraction).
(1912)
Andreas Gursky
[Photographer, b. 1955, Leipzig, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf.]
[M]y pictures really are becoming increasingly formal and abstract. A visual structure appears to dominate the real events shown in my pictures. I subjugate the real situation to my artistic concept of the picture.
(1998)
