Thomas Struth

Typical of Struth's artistic practice are the successive groups of works dealing with topics such as streets, people, museums and nature. Struth usually photographs with a large-format camera and in colour, barely digitally processing his pictures.

Both in art criticism and on the art market, Thomas Struth has prevailed with the series Unconscious Places and Portraits conceived in the 1970s and 1980s. Participation in the Venice Biennale (1990) and at Documenta IX (1992) has consolidated its position internationally.

At the center of Struth's interest is the "precise vision" and especially the relationship between the viewer and the viewed. In his work groups, Struth regularly calls into question the perspective on traditional photographic subjects, undermines viewing habits and thus expands the photographic concept of art.

Thomas Struth's architectural photographs show places and streets that sensitively document urban development. The series Unconscious Places, which was created in cities around the world, forms an independent contribution to urban anthropology. The artist's method is the same for the series of landscapes: through the absence of people, he points to their presence and design of the rural environment. A quasi documentary character is also characteristic of other projects, e.g. the portraits or the cycle of museum images. In 2007, Struth was the first contemporary artist to exhibit at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. For this exhibition Struth photographed museum visitors in the Prado.

Since 2008, the photographer has dealt with the structurally elemental issues of humanity such as industry, research, energy and globalization. His pictures show state-of-the-art facilities such as nuclear fusion reactors or space shuttles, which are usually inaccessible to the public. Struth was commissioned in 2011 to make the official anniversary photo of the British royal couple. In 2013, Thomas Struth presented his work group Paradise in the Fundación Helge Achenbach, MIAC-Castillo de San José in Arrecife, Lanzarote.