It is one of the most famous images in contemporary photography: a monumental print, 2m high and more than 4m across, depicting Paris’s largest block of flats, in Montparnasse, on the Left Bank of the Seine. Seemingly, the panoramic composition presents a single façade of this striking Modernist building, which was constructed between 1959 and 1964.

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From afar, the overriding impression is of a grid-like geometric pattern, created by the block’s austere architecture. This is offset by rippling chromatic accents, provided by the many curtains and blinds visible in the windows of some of its 750 apartments. The effect is beguiling: a stunning mosaic of colour.

Andreas Gursky’s photograph of a Montparnasse tower block is a stunning mosaic of colour (Credit: Andreas Gursky)

Up close, though, we lose any sense of the photograph’s underlying structure, and become involved, instead, in the individual human dramas, and signs of life, being played out in each flat.

This push and pull, between macro and micro views, animates the image, since it is impossible fully to appreciate both perspectives at the same time.

In fact, to make Paris, Montparnasse (1993), which exists in an edition of five plus two artists’ proofs, Andreas Gursky, the celebrated German photographer, digitally stitched together a couple of separate shots. Four years ago, in 2013, one of the artists’ proofs sold at auction for nearly £1.5 million.