I remember the first time I saw Gerhard Richter’s book, Atlas, as clearly as if it were yesterday. I was living in Brooklyn at the time, it was 2006 and I had temporarily moved to New York for my job. I decided that during that time I would not make work. This decision was mainly due to the fact that I did not have all my art supplies with me. I was, at the time, working in a mix of landscape photography and alternative photographic methods. I also hadn’t started taking digital photography seriously in my practice, so, all the photos I took with my company’s dslr I regarded as experiments.
I was at a friend’s apartment and it was one of those sticky summer nights. He had no air conditioning, so I was trying not to sweat through all of my clothing. We started going through his vast collection of philosophy and art books when he approached me with this extremely thick book. He asked me, “Have you ever seen Gerhard Richter’s work?” and I said, “The abstract painter?” Until that moment, I had never seen any of his photographic work only his abstract paintings, none of which I was all that impressed with having seen lots and lots of abstract painters during my art studies.
He said, “No, his photographs.” and he handed me the book.
I was sitting on his couch with the book in my lap. I opened it and that was it. That was the first time I had seen so clearly a practice of making images that inspired me to pursue something similar. The multiplicity of shots, the categorization of images, the beauty of the landscapes. To me, the images were one very long and soothing song. It was a very powerful book for me to look through at the time. It inspired me to go down a path of documentation with photography that I had not yet previously considered.
If you have not seen this book, and you are pursuing a practice that involves photography, I highly suggest that you take a look.