How Andreas Gursky turned an Amazon depot into art

By Simon Willis

One day in the summer of 1984, Andreas Gursky was on holiday in the Swiss Alps when he took a photograph of the Klausen Pass, showing an area of pasture below a jagged grey peak. It was only later, when he enlarged the image, that he spotted what else was there: a line of tiny walkers spread out below the mountain. The figures were either alone or in pairs and widely spaced across the landscape. They were unrelated people doing the same thing but on their own.

This picture opens a new retrospective of Gursky’s work at the Hayward Gallery in London, and exemplifies its strongest theme: uniformity. At the beginning the uniformity in question is gentle, even pastoral. The Swiss picture forms part of a series about landscape and leisure, his so-called “Sunday pictures”, shot in the 1980s and showing people cycling, walking, fishing and swimming. Using wide angles and high perspectives, Gursky captured groups of people all engaged in the same activity, whether lounging by the pool in the German town of Ratingen or fishing on the banks of the Ruhr.