On Locations and the Lack of Them in Gursky's Photography
... it is this claim to universality... (and) its reference to no-man's land, a non-location, a place which could be called "u-topia", something which is a fundamental concept in what we call Modernity...
In formal terms, man is never at the center of Gursky's photography. And yet people remain his only real concern... Despite his analytical view of mankind and society, Gursky always remains indulgent. If he wanted to focus on all the harsh social realities of the conflict between the individual and the constraints imposed on us by the politcal or economic system in which we live he would portray man as a slave of the machine... But his is not the case. In Gursky's photography the tragic element is missing. Instead, the artist maintains an ironic distance. normally man is viewed as a part of the whole and not as its instrument... it is never the case that he is completely dominated by his surroundings.
-Marie Luise Syring
blanket modernism that reproduces itself - simulacra, that which only references itself will soon exhume itself of any rhetoric or ideology - it becomes a end in itself, it is made because it has been made. "the coexistence of a number of apparently unconnected buildings which, by the simple fact of sharing a certain proximity, form an urban condition."