Ocean III

Ocean III is part of a series of seven works by photographer Andreas Gursky. Gursky had the idea for this body of work during a flight to Australia when watching the plane's trajectory. Landmass could only be seen on the very edges of the monitor which was mainly occupied by the blue void of the ocean.

Ocean III pushes to the center of the image what is usually only shown on the edges of common renderings of our world – the Pacific Ocean. Since no single photographs of our oceans exist for obvious reasons, the work is the result of combining hundreds of satellite pictures and images from the Internet. Although the presentation seems to be hyperrealistic at first glance, it has been extensively manipulated in scale and color to emphasize the role of continents as mere providers of orientation and frames for the vast and multifaceted seascape.

With his Ocean series Gursky sets a new level of distance between object and observer and reinvents the way he works as a photographer. The constructive production process closely relates the work to painting and collage.

Gursky Earth (Die ZEIT)