99 Cent 1999

Andreas Gursky created this photograph called "99 Cent," and when you look at it, you wonder, is it a photograph or a painting? Think of when painters like Warhol and Rosenquist started using photographs in their paintings. They were trying to bring the real world into the art world and maybe critique it a bit. Gursky’s photograph does something similar. It's almost too real, but it's actually totally fake. It’s been digitally manipulated to make it even more intense, more colorful, more everything. It's like he's saying, "Hey, look at all this stuff we have! Isn't it amazing? Isn't it awful?" And when you look at this image, you're not just seeing a photograph, you're seeing a comment on our consumer culture. Like when a painter stretches a canvas, Gursky is stretching the limits of photography. He is in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring our creativity and his own.