Andreas Gursky was born in 1955 in Leipzig, East Germany.
A solo museum exhibition followed was held at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld. The booming international art market, including a growing taste for photography and interest in the Bechers’ circle, helped bring Gursky commercial success. In the 1990s he traveled internationally to such cities as Tokyo, Cairo, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Singapore, and Los Angeles, often planning out his shoots of buildings, factories, hotels, and office buildings in advance of his arrival. In 1991–93 he photographed Siemens manufacturing plants at the company’s invitation, juxtaposing technology, people, and their environment.
In 1994 an exhibition of Gursky’s work from 1984 to 1993 was presented at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg and the De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam. The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf presented a mid-career retrospective of his work in 1998. The Museum of Modern Art organized another retrospective in 2001. In 2007, two major traveling museum exhibitions of his work were organized by Kunstmuseum Basel and Haus der Kunst in Munich. His work has been seen in international exhibitions, including the Internationale Foto-Triennale in Esslingen (1989 and 1995), the Venice Biennale (1990 and 2004), and the Biennale of Sydney (1996 and 2000). Gursky has won several awards, among them the 1988 Förderpreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen für junge Künstler, the 1998 Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize, and the 2001 Infinity Award for Art from the International Center of Photography, New York.
He lives and works in Düsseldorf.