Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth – Studies in Düsseldorf with Gerhard Richter and Bernd Becher

Thomas Struth was born in 1954 in Geldern, and set the course for his career as an artist by studying at the State Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf. Between 1973 and 1980 he had famous teachers such as the painter and sculptor Gerhard Richter who taught Struth painting, and the grand seigneur of the Düsseldorf photo school, Bernd Becher. Aided by a scholarship from the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Thomas Struth was able to finance a stay in New York in 1978 which he crowned with an exhibition at the legendary P.S.1 (today MoMA PS1). Struth became a teacher himself in 1993 when he took on a role as professor at the State University of Design in Karlsruhe. Privately, the photo artist found a fitting counterpart in a word artist: his wife is the American writer Tara Bray Smith.

An artist with concept: Thomas Struth and the “precise gaze”

Thomas Struth’s preferred working method is based on clearly structured work groups which are always focussed on a particular theme: streets, museums, natural sites, or people in particular situations. Struth generally shoots his motifs with a large-format camera, mostly in colour. He differentiates himself from famous colleagues such as Andreas Gursky or Thomas Ruff not least by almost completely forgoing digital post-production. In the composition of his pictures, he pays greater attention to breaking with conventional visual habits, so to say ‘forcing’ a fresh perspective on his audience. With this expansion of the photographic concept of art, Struth was able to convince the art critics as well as the art market. All over the world, Struth succeeded in creating an impressive documentation of urban evolution through the intelligent photography of public spaces and streets. In doing so, he time and again touched upon the field of documentary photography that his former teacher Bernd Becher and wife Hilla had strongly influenced. The artist himself speaks of the correlation of art as the “precise gaze”.

From visible to invisible

Despite great success, Thomas Struth remains unseen in his photography of the visible, but turns more and more to the invisible. His themes have become ever more comprehensive and more universal. He is interested in world issues, as the artist himself said, and chooses motifs such as the machine room of a genetic test manufacturer, for genetic engineering is perhaps the most important and controversial advance in human science. In doing so, Struth consciously rejects any artistic accentuation of his motif; he does not stage, but only shows, seeking his own perspectives with much inspiration and subtlety. Deeper symbolism and pompous metaphors are alien to the artist; he wishes to familiarise people with reality in his pictures – a reality that is more complex than ever before and needs more than ever the mediation of a clairvoyant artist. For this purpose, he is often permitted to photograph technical locations that are normally closed to the public. Privileges are a matter of course for the artist: in 2011 he was entrusted with the official anniversary photo of the British royal couple. Thomas Struth lives and works today in Berlin.