Andreas Gursky explores the intersection of human culture and nature in large-scale studies of leisure sites, traffic hubs, transit zones, and massive public events. As a graduate of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, his practice is influenced by Bernd and Hilla Becher’s distanced, technically precise approach to typology. Yet unlike his teachers, he does not work in series. Instead, Gursky concentrates on single works, creating richly detailed tableaus that occupy the entire picture plane, rather than focusing centrally on one point.

The monumental image is one of five works depicting the Arirang Festival in North Korea in 2007. Gursky captures the monumental scale of human spectacle only achievable in single remaining outpost of communist dictatorship. The annual festival occurs at Rungrado Day Stadium, the largest stadium in the world, in honor of the birth of North Korea's former leader Kim II Sung. The ceremony features tens of thousands of gymnasts performing a routine in exact harmony, while thirty thousand strictly disciplined school children turn over a series of cards revealing various patriotic symbols and slogans. The resulting performance is both visually stunning and representative of the oppression of those performing. Gursky's composition is the modern equivalent of a large-scale history painting, providing a dramatically, perfectly composed glimpse of a fraught political environment.

Andreas Gursky (b. 1955) is a German artist who photographs built and natural environments on a grand scale. He studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1980s, and their penchant for systematically documenting buildings and industrial machinery has inluenced the photographer’s aesthetics. Emerging in the 1990s as an important figure in contemporary German art, Gursky had a mid-career retrospective at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1998, and another retrospective in 2001, organized by The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Gursky’s works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern in London. He lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.

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