Prada II

1996

Not on view

Returned to lender

This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.

To produce this quasi-architectural study of a barren luxury store display, Andreas Gursky used newly available software both to artificially stretch the underlying chemical image and to digitally generate the billboard-size print. At ten feet wide, the work is a Frankensteinian glimpse of what would transform the medium of photography over the next two decades. Gursky seems to have fully understood the Pandora’s box he had opened by using digital tools to manipulate his pictures, which put into question their essential realism: "I have a weakness for paradox. For me...the photogenic allows a picture to develop a life of its own, on a two-dimensional surface, which doesn’t exactly reflect the real object."

Artwork Details

Overview

Exhibition History

Title: Prada II
Artist: Andreas Gursky (German, born Leipzig, 1955)
Date: 1996
Medium: Chromogenic print
Dimensions: Image: 65 in. × 10 ft. 4 13/16 in. (165.1 × 317 cm)
Framed: 65 in. × 10 ft. 4 in. (165.1 × 315 cm)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Promised Gift of Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary
Curatorial Department: Photographs