Andreas Gursky Quotations

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 father did advertising photography.

My preference for clear structures is the result of my desire - perhaps illusory - to keep track of things and maintain my grip on the world.

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.

I pursue one goal the encyclopaedia of life.

We are alone on this planet. It's not a choice. Here we are. This is what everyone has to deal with.

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.

I am never interested in the individual, but in the human species and its environment.

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.

Maybe to try to understand not just that we are living in a certain building or in a certain location, but to become aware that we are living on a planet that is going at enormous speed through the universe. For me it’s more a synonym. 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.

Vision is an intelligent form of thought