Shanghai,

2000

In 1990, after establishing himself as a landscape photographer, Gursky turned to depicting the excesses of global capitalism. Here his subject is a flagship hotel of an international conglomerate. This vertiginous view of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Shanghai was constructed from photographs taken on three separate floors that were digitally fused into a single, towering image. The result is both hyper-detailed and eerily abstract—monotonous in its repetition yet strangely otherworldly. The paintings on the walls constitute the only variation between the floors, reducing art to mere decoration. Tiny human figures punctuate the vast interior, underscoring the isolation and anonymity of contemporary life in the metropole.