Andreas Gursky was born in Leipzig in 1955. From 1978 to 1981 he studied visual communications at the Folkwang School in Essen. In 1981 he began his studies at Düsseldorf’s art academy, where he became a master student under the German photographer Bernd Becher, who together with Hilla Becher trained important representatives of the Düsseldorf school of photography, including Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff and Axel Hütte. In 1987 Gursky had his first solo exhibition at Düsseldorf’s airport. In 1989 he was awarded the First German Photo Prize in Stuttgart. His mostly large-format, digitally reworked photographs of landscapes, architecture and interiors have been shown around the world in major solo and group exhibitions. In 2001 the Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted a large retrospective to him, which then travelled to the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris and elsewhere. Over the course of his career Gursky has been awarded numerous prizes and awards. In 2008 he was presented with the Kaiserring by the city of Goslar. Since 2010 he has taught at the art academy in Düsseldorf, where he lives.
