Images of Equivalence: Exchange-Value in Andreas Gursky’s Photographs and Production Method

Abstract

Contemporaneous with developments in information technology and digital photography, globalization has emerged as an economic, political and cultural process enmeshed with the spread of capitalism. Combining analog photography and digital image processing, Andreas Gursky’s large-format, vividly colored photographs are often discussed in relation to globalization. Despite these claims, there are no sustained, cohesive interpretations that account for his subject matter, form and production process. To investigate the relationship between images, production methods and socio-economic context, this article focuses on the role of exchange-value in Gursky’s practice. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives of late capitalism, and including an analysis of Gursky’s work from North Korea, this article argues that exchange-value pervades Gursky’s vision of the contemporary world. As a result, exchange-value is seen to subtend both the world of, and the world ostensibly beyond, late capitalism.

Keywords:

• Andreas Gursky (1955–)
• Fredric Jameson (1934–)
• globalization
• late capitalism
• digital photography
• contemporary art
• exchange-value
• index

Notes

All translations from German to English by Christopher Williams-Wynn.

1. The exact yeto examine the cultural, economic and socialar in which Gursky began digitally manipulating his images is uncertain. Ralf Beil writes that “[s]ince 1992, Gursky has been digitizing his analog photos and processing them using Paintbox, a graphic PC program produced by the English company Quantel” (Beil 2008, 16; note 30). Peter Galassi, by contrast, states that Gursky began manipulating his images in 1991 (Galassi 2001, 39). Art historian Wolfgang Kemp proposes an earlier date, writing that “since 1988 he has used digital image processing and collages pictures of a supermarket or river route to form endless, strip-like images” (“[s]eit 1988 bedient er sich der digitalen Bildverarbeitung und collagiert die Aufnahmen eines Supermarktes oder einer Flussstrecke zu endlos streifenförmigen Bildern”) (Kemp 2011, 118–19). In any case, Gursky’s shift to digital manipulation coincides with his developing interest in sites associated with globalization.

2. Notably, since Gursky produced this photograph, the web of market exchange has become even more complex. In 2007 the Chicago Board of Trade merged with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to form the CME Group, which in turn is listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market.

3. Notes on Gursky’s manipulation of these images are provided in Siegel 2001, 106 (Chicago); Lopes 2010, 10 (99 Cent) and Galassi 2001, 38 (Ohne Titel V).

4. Jameson (1991, 7–9) makes this comparison between modernist and postmodernist visual art with reference Vincent Van Gogh’s A Pair of Boots (1887) and Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes (1980–1981). In the case of Van Gogh, the materiality of physical life and labor is condensed into the materiality of his oil paintings. It is this capacity to signify reality that marks Jameson’s modernist image. By contrast, the lack of pictorial depth within Warhol’s silk screens, and their reference to the photographic image, disallows an understanding of reality. In summary, for Jameson the modernist image discloses the world, whereas the postmodernist image disallows this possibility.