Beate Gütschow

At first glance, the large-scale black-and-white photographs of German photographer Beate Gütschow (born 1970) seem to be straightforward documents of urban scenes. In fact, every pebble and every hubcap is completely orchestrated, for these images are the result of considerable digital manipulation. This monograph surveys her ongoing explorations in this realm.

Beate Gütschow: LS/S, the first monograph on this exceptional artist, features two bodies of work that compel the viewer to think about humankind's celebration of nature and our ceaseless desire to control it. In these luscious, digitally produced photographs, each detail--down to the most subtle nuance of palette and light--is carefully controlled, culled from an archive of images taken specifically for use in these seamless collages. Every blade of grass, pebble and nonchalant passerby has been painstakingly orchestrated by the artist, who draws on the work and traditions of Romantic-era painters like Constable and Turner, as well as photo legends like Lewis Baltz and Bernd and Hilla Becher. In this volume, the landscape series, LS, are constructed to convey the "perfect" pastoral scene. In stark contrast, the cityscape series, S, present an eerily familiar vision of a nonexistent, but clearly dystopian form of architecture. Although the two series present seemingly tranquil settings that at first appear as binary opposites, in fact, they are equally fraught with issues of control, inauthenticity and the pursuit of perfection.