A huge part of the mission of Labelscar is to catalog artistry in everyday things. In particular, we feel that most contemporary commercial architecture, especially suburban retail development of the late 20th century, is undervalued and underappreciated, and likely won't attract the attention it deserves until too late.
This whole championing-an-obscure-cause thing means that I know how to spot a kindred spirit when I see one, and photographer Andreas Gursky is one of my favorites. By and large, his photography isn't exactly retail-oriented, though his famous piece "99 Cent"–pictured above–certainly is. Most of what Gursky does tries to capture the beauty in modern (or post-modern) repetition, and in a scene like the one above captures it pretty marvelously.
I also enjoy Michael Wolf, a peer of Gursky's, who's taken this set of striking photos from Hong Kong, though something about Wolf's photography seems to push the envelope to a point where I wonder if Photoshop was somehow involved. The image below is actually my desktop wallpaper at work–Do you think my coworkers find me strange? Nah…
I love Gursky’s photography though my favorite set of his are the stock exchanges.