99 Cent II Diptychon 2001

Andreas Gursky made this photograph, "99 Cent II Diptychon," to give us a new way to see something ordinary. At first glance, it's just shelves of products, but the longer you look, the more it becomes an exploration of color and form. Gursky's trick is scale and repetition. He shows us the sheer volume of stuff in a supermarket, turning consumer goods into abstract patterns. Look at how he captures the light bouncing off each package, turning the entire scene into a shimmering field of color. It’s like a Rothko for the age of mass consumption, each item a mark or gesture in a broader composition. What I love is that Gursky doesn't try to hide the artifice. He plays with perspective and scale, creating a hyper-real image that’s both seductive and unsettling. It reminds me of Jeff Wall, another artist who treats photography as a form of painting. Ultimately, "99 Cent" invites us to question our relationship to the material world, and see the beauty and the strangeness in the everyday.