May Day III

At first sight, Gursky's monumental images overwhelm the viewer with rich color, the movement and the density of the detail provoke a sense of excitement and awe that is hard to resist. But this feeling of euphoria lasts only for as long as it takes for the more subtle undercurrents inherent in the image to come to light. Once one has uncovered this it is impossible to look at any of Gursky's photographs in the same light again. May Day III is a key example of this effect. Initially the eye is swept across the image by the sea of waving hands and faces, clearly visible even at this distance. You can almost feel the music that is propelling the crowd into a beer-soaked, sweating frenzy.
Yet, as the eye rests on the image as a whole, the people who at first looked so distinct appear uncannily alike. In this huge crowd there is not one individual. Their movements and actions are almost identical. Gursky presents us with the hysteria of an ecstatic crowd: humanity reduced to a generic mass of frantic activity. The image of the crowd is an extreme instance of the desire to lose oneself, to escape ones identity, even if only temporarily, but here it seems to engender less positive feelings of togetherness than a sense of collective alienation. As with much of Gursky's work, this image makes a potent comment on the homogenization of contemporary culture.