Andreas Gursky, Paris, Montparnasse II, 2025 @ Gagosian

Andreas Gursky, Montparnasse II, 2025

From every angle, Andreas Gursky's new work, Montparnasse II,  is stunning. The large photograph is now on exhibition at Gagosians small gallery space in rue Castiglione, first seen on approach through the large street window. Walking through the arcade, passers by are able to peer through the window and, from a distance, see through to the windows in Montparnasse II. Inside the gallery, it is difficult not to be pulled into the orbit of the world inside the building, even though we cannot see inside. We remain at a distance from the apartments through the windows, no matter how close to the photograph we step. This is the first arresting realization about Montparnasse II: we are looking at a mise-en-abime of windows. Windows within a window of the photograph, itself able to be seen through the window of the gallery. 

Installation View @ 9 rue de Catiglione

Immediately, I was reminded of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, as we, the viewer take the place of Jeffries with his telescope, straining to peer inside the windows on the other side of the street. In Gursky's windows we see a man sitting at a desk, his hand on chin, a woman sitting at her table. I am mesmerized by books on the sill, arrangements of flowers, a doll's house and stuffed toys, photographs, CDs, a lamp, a radio able to be seen in different windows. Each window tells of the individuality of a person, no matter the conformity of the modernist building they inhabit. Some of the most beautiful spaces—or windows—are covered with a curtain, blue, green, purple, pink, cotton, velvet, and plain white blinds. Other windows are like abstract paintings as reflections are caught on the window creating a soft pattern of moving shapes. Still others are blackened out completely, as though we are in the movie theatre waiting for the film to begin.

Andreas Gursky, Montparnasse II, 2025

When I wasn't imagining that I was looking through Jeffries' telescope, I could have been looking at a film strip, or a photograph contact sheet of thumbnails, some frames similar to others, but every one different. Again, I was reminded that even if everyone has the same-sized window, even if they live in the uniform Immeuble d'habitation Maine-Montparnasse in the rue Commandant-Mouchotte, there is nothing instrumentalized about everyday life. The functional building designed by Jean Dubuisson is a characteristic French postwar mass housing solution, built from 1959 to 1964 at a time when housing was in high demand. To me, the photograph shows that the human will always be in tension with the systematic organization of the built environment.

Gursky in the making of Montparnasse II

Like many of Gursky's photographs, Montparnasse II raises questions about the reality of the image. We believe what we see to exist, even though we know it can't be real. Here the original building has lost its drabness and uniformity, clouds removed, the length impossible for a camera lens to capture. Like, and very different from the first iteration of Montparnasse (1993), Montparnasse II  is a composite manipulated photograph, made from approximately one thousand photographs, taken from eight different positions along a terrace on opposite buildings. Curtains have been coloured, windows retouched, the sky brushed out. Thus, over time, recognizing that I am looking at an aestheticized image, I started to wonder. Behind all the excitement of seeing Gursky's brilliant work in which he pushes photography technology to its limits, there are a number of darker questions lurking inside these windows.

Andreas Gursky, Montparnasse, 1993

Whose apartment am I looking inside? Did Gursky obtain permission or is he, and am I, a voyeur? Turning peoples' lives into objects? I start to wonder who lives in the building? How many of the occupants have changed since the 1993 photograph? How much is the rent? Is it subsidized? And as is my number one question when it comes to all Paris buildings: are the walls thick or thin? How noisy is it on the inside? What is the reality of life inside this building that I am looking at? These details of daily life are hidden from the viewer of the large glossy print because the building is veiled in the beauty of Gursky's photographic genius. 

There is also the question of time passing: technology is now more sophisticated than it was in 1993. The image is more precise, the developing techniques more sophisticated. Gursky emphasizes thie element of the work, it is a temporal project, functioning in history, and yet, we see it only as a spatial depiction. The most interesting time passing comes as I strain to see inside the windows, voyeuristically, even though I am frustrated, and there is little to see. This is the time across which the narrative of Gursky's photograph is written—my inability to look into the depth of other people's lives from behind windows inside windows, framed by a photograph.