It depicts the interior of what appears to be a luxury goods store, with a showcase displaying six rows of about 200 trainers, namely of Nike footwear.
The photograph presents, like others of his works, multi-coloured objects in rows, against a white monochrome backgroung, in his personal take on the topics of consumerism and globalization in the modern societies.
Artistically the work references both the minimalism of authors like Donald Judd, and the pop art tradition of Andy Warhol, in the depiction of high consumerism goods.
[1] Peter Galassi mentions in Gursky's works like the current one, "the solemn majesty of infinite progression (...) into the anesthetic repetitions of the assembly line and the display case".
[4] There are prints of this photograph at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, and at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, in Oslo.