Thomas struth photographer biography video

German photographer (born )

Thomas Struth (born 11 October ) is a German photographer who is best known for his Museum Photographs series, black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the s, and his family photographs series. Struth lives and works between Berlin and New York.^[1]

Early life and education

Born to ceramic potter Gisela Struth and bank director Heinrich Struth in Geldern, Germany,^[2] Struth trained at the Düsseldorf Academy from until where he initially studied painting under Peter Kleemann and, from , Gerhard Richter.

Thomas struth photographer biography video download

Best known for his photographic "series" - street, audience, family portrait and new technologies series - Struth has a strong nomadic streak and has travelled to the corners of the world for his art.

Increasingly drawn to photography and with Richter's support, Struth, along with Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, and Tata Ronkholz, joined the first year of the new photography class run by Bernd and Hilla Becher, in ^[3]

Work

In , as part of a student exhibition at the Academy, Struth first showed a grid composed of 49 photographs taken from a centralized perspective^[4] on Düsseldorf's deserted streets, each of them obeying a strict logic of central symmetry.^[5] The compositions are simple and the photographs are neither staged nor digitally manipulated in post-production.^[6] Strong contrasts of light and shade are also avoided, Struth preferring the greyish, uninflected light of early morning.

This serves to enhance the neutral treatment of the scenes.^[7]

In , Struth and Hütte travelled to England for two months, and teamed up to photograph different aspects of housing in the urban context of East London. In Struth was the first artist in residence at P.S. 1 Studios, Long Island City.^{[citation needed]} In Struth travelled to Paris to visit Thomas Schütte, a fellow student at the Kunstakademie, and continued his photographs of cityscapes.

He went on to produce similar series in Rome (), Edinburgh (), Tokyo (), and elsewhere. These early works largely consisted of black-and-white shots of streets. Skyscrapers were another feature of his work, with many of his photographs attempting to show the relationship people have with their modern-day environment.

In the mids, Struth added a new dimension to his work when he started to produce family portraits, some of which are in colour and others in black and white.

This was after a meeting with psychoanalystIngo Hartmann. As a result, these works attempt to show the underlying social dynamics within a seemingly still photograph.

In , Struth began work on his best-known cycle, Museum Photographs, devoted to the visitors to some of the world's great museums and buildings, including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Accademia in Venice, and the Pantheon in Rome.

Expanding the practice after living in Naples and Rome at the end of the s, he also photographed visitors of churches. From on, Struth expanded the series with images shot on sites of powerful secular significance (including Times Square and the Yosemite National Park). His pictures of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, taken between and , comprise the first series of Museum Photographs dedicated entirely to a single museum with architectural and sculptural works from classical antiquity, including the famous Pergamon Altar and the market gate of Milet.^[8] After several unsuccessful attempts to make works based on candid shots of visitors at the Pergamon Museum, in he decided to orchestrate the positioning of participants in a series of photos.^[9] Struth's "Museo del Prado" series from , composed of five photographs taken over the course of one week, all shot from slightly different angles, of visitors flocking around Velázquez's Las Meninas. Also in , he began producing a second series consisting of close-ups of spectators of a single work at the Hermitage in St.

Petersburg.

Thomas Struth Photography, Bio, Ideas

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Here the spectators are the central object of the photograph, while the artwork itself remains outside the frame. By including in his photographs people who are looking at art, "Struth makes viewers aware of their own active participation in the completion of the work's meaning, not as passive consumers but as re-interpreters of the past."^[4]

Basing himself in Düsseldorf, Struth's profile continued to expand in the s.

Between and , Struth began scouring the earth for jungle settings in Japan, Australia, China, America and Europe;^[10] his first eight large-format Pictures from Paradise were created in in the Daintree Rainforest in Australia.^[11] Between and , he produced a series of photographs featuring groups of people gathered at emblematic locations, whether as tourists or as pilgrims.^[12]

Again created throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas, mural-sized colour photographs of that are up to 4 metres long record the structural intricacy of remote techno-industrial and scientific research spaces, such as physics institutes, pharmaceutical plants, space stations, dockyards, nuclear facilities and other edifices of technological production.^{[citation needed]} In , Struth presented a series of pictures in which he again penetrates key places of human imagination to scrutinize the landscape of enterprise, invention and digital engineering.

Taking an archetypal site for the creation of cultural dreams and imagination, one group of pictures depicts panoramic views of Disneyland and Disney California Adventure (devoid of crowds),^[13] partly inspired by Katja Eichinger’s article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about the altered perspective and reading of the theme parks since their beginnings in the s.^{[citation needed]} For his most recent work, Animals (–), Struth worked at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin, following researchers in biology and veterinary medicine in their study of wildlife diversity and conservation.^{[citation needed]}

Meanwhile, Struth continues to add to his collection of family portraits.^[14] In , Gerhard Richter asked Struth to make a family portrait for an article on Richter's work in the New York Times Magazine.

In , he was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to make a double portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh.^[15]

From to , Struth was the first Professor of Photography at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Thomas struth photographer biography We met great German photographer Thomas Struth for an in-depth conversation about his works, career and view on life.“You have to have a reason. That’s the s.

In , he was an artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Between and , he served as Humanitas Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art at Oxford University.^[16]

Exhibitions

Struth's work has been widely shown in solo and group exhibitions, among them the 44th Venice Biennale ()^{[citation needed]} and Documenta IX ()^{[citation needed]} at Kassel.

His first solo show outside of Germany took place at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh in ^[17] In , Struth exhibited in the group show "Another Objectivity",^{[citation needed]} organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, which sought to define a current of research born in Germany in the wake of the Bechers’ work.^[18] Struth later had his first solo exhibition in the U.S.

at The Renaissance Society in Chicago in ^[19] Following the anthological exhibitions held in at the Dallas Museum of Art^{[citation needed]} and the MOCA in Los Angeles,^{[citation needed]} in his work was presented at the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum, with the screening of the video One Hour Video Portraits of portraits on which Struth had been working since ^[20] The centre of the exhibition was the Museum series, which featured seemingly ordinary shots of people entering churches, museums and other public places.

In , he became the first contemporary artist ever to be exhibited at the Museo del Prado, Madrid, among the permanent collection of old masters.^{[citation needed]}

In , a European retrospective of his work, "Thomas Struth: Photographs –" was held at Kunsthaus Zürich, later traveling to Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20, Düsseldorf; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Museu Serralves, Porto.^{[citation needed]}

Recognition

Art market

Struth usually works in editions of ten prints.^[23] On 12 November , his work Pantheon, Rome () was sold to David Zwirner at Christie'sNew York, for $1,,^[24] On 26 June , a version of Pantheon, Rome, executed in , sold for $1,, at Sotheby'sLondon.^[25] Another version of the same photograph sold by $1,, at Sotheby'sNew York, on 12 May , currently the highest price reached by one of his works.^[26]

Personal life

In a interview with Die Zeit, Struth publicly criticized art collector Friedrich Christian Flick for not contributing to the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, a government fund for slave laborers and their families; Flick later made a payment of 5 million euros.^[27]

In , Struth married author Tara Bray Smith in New York.^[2]

Publications

• Unbewusste Orte / Unconscious Places, Bern
• Museum Photographs, Munich
• Strangers and Friends,
• Stefen Gronert und Christoph Schreier: Thomas Struth.

  Straßen.

  Thomas struth photographer biography video Best known for his photographic "series" - street, audience, family portrait and new technologies series - Struth has a strong nomadic streak and has travelled to the corners of the world for his art.

  Fotografie bis , Kunstmuseum Bonn, Cologne,

• Portraits, Munich
• Still, Munich
• Struth, Munich
• Thomas Struth – My Portrait,
• Löwenzahnzimmer, Munich
• New Pictures from Paradise, Munich
• Photographien –, Munich
• Pergamon Museum, Munich
• Museum Photographs, Munich
• Les Museum Photographs de Thomas Struth.

  Une mise en abyme, Paris/Munich

• Thomas Struth – Photographs –, Schirmer/Mosel, , ISBN&#;
• Thomas Struth: Unconscious Places (with an essay by Richard Sennett), Schirmer/Mosel

Public collections

Struth's work is held, among others, in the following public collections:

References

Further reading

• Grosenick, Uta; Riemschneider, Burkhard, eds. (). Art Now (25th anniversary&#;ed.). Köln: Taschen. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;

External links