Thomas Struth

Artist Talk: Thomas Struth

Contemporary artist Thomas Struth presents a lecture on his work. In the mid-1980s, Struth began a series of portraits of individuals and families illustrating his vision of photography as a science-derived tool for psychological investigation. Struth’s best-known series, the Museum Photographs (1989–2005), captures individuals and crowds looking at iconic works of Western art in the great museums of the world. These images characterize museum visits as complex social rituals of seeing and being seen and address the issue of the way art is presented and valued in public collections. Over the past 15 years Struth has created New Pictures from Paradise (1998–2007), images of gathering places for religious believers or tourists (from 1998), and photographs from the fields of science and research, industrial production, and technology (beginning in 2007). Struth lives and works in Berlin and New York.