Andreas Gursky is a German artist born in 1955 known for his large-scale digitally manipulated photographs. His most expensive photograph, Rhein II from 1999, sold for $4.3 million in 2011. Gursky often takes photographs from elevated positions and splices together multiple images of the same scene to create a surreal monumentality. He studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher and was influenced by their systematic documentation as conceptual framework. Gursky's works are now in prominent museum collections worldwide and he lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.

2. Andreas Gursky
German born: 1955
Large scale color photographs
Most expensive photograph:
Rhein II (1999)
Sold in 2011 for $4,338,500

3. Andreas Gursky is a German artist known for his large-scale digitally manipulated
images. Similar in scope to early 19th-century landscape paintings, Gursky’s
photographs capture built and natural environments on a grand scale. Often taken from a
lofted vantage point, the artist latter splices together multiple images of the same scene.
This dizzying repetition of elements creates a surreal monumentality, as seen in his 99
Cent (1999). “In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become
more and more radical,” he mused. “Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but
should be looking at what's behind something.”
Born January 15, 1955 in Leipzig, East Germany, he studied alongside fellow student
Thomas Ruff under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the
1980s. The Becher’s penchant for systematic documentation as a conceptual framework
had a profound impact on Gursky’s photography. Emerging in the 1990s, the artist
established himself as an important figure in contemporary German art, going on to be
the subject of retrospectives at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1998 and in 2001 at The
Museum of Modern Art in New York. Today, Gursky’s works are in the permanent
collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, and the Tate Modern in London. He lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Biography courtesy of artnet.com