New Year's Day Swimmers 1988

This is "New Year's Day Swimmers" by Andreas Gursky, a photograph with a muted palette of greys, browns, and blues, like a washed-out watercolor. You can sense the cold, the damp, the particular light of a northern winter. I imagine Gursky, setting up his camera, contemplating the scene. The photo, somehow, is both epic and intimate: an aerial view of a crowd of brave folks diving into chilly waters. They gather at the river's edge, waiting, ready for a fresh start, while rescue boats bob on the water. It reminds me of painters like Pieter Bruegel, capturing the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Like a painting, Gursky's photograph is all about pattern and repetition, mass and individual, the relationship between a group and a person within it. Whether a painting or a photograph, what is so magical is that artists are always in conversation, responding to one another across time. This piece is a conversation between the epic and the personal. It speaks to a collective courage, a plunge into the unknown, with all the hope and trepidation that a new year brings.