En Allemagne, la Kunstakademie de Düsseldorf est le lieu où la photographie documentaire est légitimée comme pratique artistique durant les années 1980. Dans la classe de Bernd et Hilla Becher, des étudiants tels Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff et Andreas Gursky y apprennent les principes fondateurs de la Nouvelle Objectivité. Ce mémoire portera plus particulièrement sur le travail d'Andreas Gursky. Nous expliquerons de quelles façons l'artiste détourne les stratégies figuratives et procédurales associées à la photographie documentaire afin de construire une représentation structurée et détaillée du monde. L'étude de son travail nous conduira ainsi à réfuter la notion d'objectivité pour analyser l'image photographique à partir de son intelligibilité, de sa lisibilité et de son autonomie formelle. Dans les œuvres d'Andreas Gursky, les problèmes associés à l'émergence de la mondialisation y sont évoqués de façon générique. L'organisation spatiale des espaces photographiés se traduit par des arrangements compositionnels rigoureusement structurés. La précision focale attribuée à chaque motif permet enfin de scruter les sujets représentés dans les moindres détails. Nous exposerons les principales stratégies employées par l'artiste qui favorisent ces différents modes de lecture. L'emprunt de registres thématiques traités par les médias de masse, l'attention portée à l'autonomie plastique de ses œuvres comme la recomposition numérique de celles-ci seront étudiés. Notre discussion consistera ainsi à comprendre la valeur référentielle des photographies d'Andreas Gursky en dehors d'un rapport dichotomique entre les notions d'objectivité et de subjectivité. Considérant que les enjeux sociaux culturels ne peuvent être représentés directement, nous démontrerons que sa démarche esthétique et conceptuelle nécessite un travail de construction. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Andreas Gursky, photographie allemande, Kunstakademie de Düsseldorf, objectivité, esthétique documentaire.

All throughout the 1911 century, the city of Athens manifest a distinct character that was inspired by its history. Flourishing with Neoclassical civic architecture, it remained a modest metropolis that was planned to function harmoniously around its ancient monuments. Today in the 21st century, its landscape has undergone a radical transformation. The city has expanded uncontrollably to accommodate an ever-increasing inflow of urban migration, accumulating one half of the nation's entire population within a confined geological space. Athens has become a product of cataclysmic urban growth. Furthermore, the ancient city is becoming increasingly anonymous, sprawling, with a landscape that is subjected to dominant economic trends. My photographic work for this practice led Ph. D. critically examines the ways in which development has made an impact on the Athenian landscape, altering its physiognomy. My research draws together Eugene Atget's documentation of the city of Paris, in conjunction to Walter Benjamin's criticism of modernity to demonstrate how capitalism produced a destructive effect on culture and a loss of history to society at large. In addition, I investigate the documentary value of the work by contemporary photographer Andreas Gursky to establish the character of our own modern age, and to create a critical image of the city and its landscape in the photographs of my work. Throughout my research, l consider how Atget, Benjamin as well asGursky utilise the aesthetic of the photographic document as a model for generating a criticism of society, new ways of perceiving the world, in addition to generating a sense of historical awareness for the observer of their work. Through particular subjects such as the industry of property development, tourism, as well as others, I explore how Athens has lost the inherent connection with its history and the cultural heritage that it is simultaneously trying to promote. Juxtaposing Athens with Old Paris, I consider how the historic parts of the city become destroyed in the interest of urban development, and argue that the present chaotic appearance of city is not only the product of its modern history, but also the outcome of capitalism as a world historic condition of our time

A new class of photographs that relies on digital processes, best exemplified by the works of Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky and Jeff Wall all exhibit a ‘not quite right’ quality that calls into question some of the most closely held truisms of photographic thought. Through novel technological processes combined with the elements of the new photography—new scale, fabulist imagery, and implied narrative—these images challenge the nature of photography as a documentary process and, beyond that, the nature of what we understand to be ‘the real’ that is supposedly documented. A visual analysis of these images through the lens of Roland Barthes’ and Susan Stewart’s scholarship reveals truths about these images and about photography as a medium. What these elements, this ‘lack of rightness’, can tell us about photography and its position as documentary medium can help us better understand the nature of contemporary photography as a truly creative medium rather than a documentation of the real. These artists are engaging in a discourse of artifice, questioning the position of photographs as documents of how it was, revealing that not only is their work not a documentation of the world as it is, but that photography never was.