[1][2] The photograph was created using digital manipulation, which removed several human references, including people and buildings.
The final result, showing the river flowing across green fields, beneath a blue cloudy sky, has similarities with the abstract paintings of Barnett Newman.
Peter Galassi stated that: "Behind Gursky's taste for the imposing clarity of unbroken parallel forms spanning a slender rectangle lies a rich inheritance of reductivist aesthetics, from Friedrich to Newman to Richter to Donald Judd... (with) images that read like horizontal versions of Newman paintings.
"[3] This version has less vivid colors and a narrower field of vision than Rhein II.
[7] A print of the photograph is held at the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, in Seoul.