Still - Hardcover

Struth, Thomas

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Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580930948 ISBN 13: 9781580930949

Publisher: The Monacelli Press, 2001

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Thomas Struth is considered one of the major figures of German photography. He combines a rigorous style with a neutral, objective vision of reality and an impressively precise technique. The first major monograph on Struth to be published in the United States, Still continues a notable tradition of books by German photographers from August Sander and Albert Renger-Patzsch to Hilla and Bernd Becher, and is a beautiful survey of Struth's body of work, including stunning close-up views of flowers, restrained urban streetscapes, intimate portraits, and frenzied museum interiors.

Critic Peter Schjeldahl has written in the Village Voice: "Thomas Struth [is] one of a generation of photographers whose work is the latest strength of a German art culture that seems to have no end of aces up its sleeve . . . His urban shots apply Becheresque formulas of static, unpopulated (surely early-morning), shadowless views with a feel for the ?typical' or ?average' aspect of a subject. As if in compensation, Struth's astonishing family portraits burn with human presence." Struth began in the early 1980s to make steely black-and-white photographs of deserted city streets and decaying buildings. In recent years, his work has diversified in subject, scale, and color to embrace increasingly ambitious subjects and challenging locations. Struth has extended his urban investigation to the inhabitants and spaces of the city, from Milan to Tokyo, while his recent landscapes and portraits complete his unique vision of the alternately public and solitary conditions of being.

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About the Author:

Thomas Struth is a former student of artist Gerhard Richter and of photographers Hilla and Bernd Becher. He has exhibited his work at museums and galleries in New York, London, Milan, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo.

From Library Journal:

German photographer Struth is among the artists from the celebrated D sseldorf School who studied under conceptualists Bernd and Hilla Becher in the 1970s and 1980s. Their rigid, deadpan style of uniform picture making proved a rich starting point, and in maturity Struth's work excavates the nature of photography itself. Three new titles encapsulate the work of this important midcareer artist. Portraits, published on the occasion of Struth's one-man exhibition at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, contains the artist's psychologically loaded frontal images of his human subjects. In the words of curator Weski, Struth's camera is applied like "a two-way mirror," reflecting both the photographer and his view of the subject with us, the viewer, as the third partner. Still presents an overview of the artist's work, including his flower pieces, some portraiture, and his early street photos. Dubbed "subconscious places" by the photographer, the city roads, with their austerity and vanishing point perspective, convey multiple layers of history as well as the "photographic moment." Museum Photographs, with its images of people viewing works of art in museums around the world, explores photography's rivalry with painting as well as issues like how art changes by being in a museum, how it is displayed, and how we look at it. Including an outstanding essay by Belting, this slim, oversized book contains 17 large plates of the enormous photographs. In spite of its usefulness in bringing these works together and the high quality of the reproductions, this publication underscores an inherent difficulty in publishing Struth's photography: because it is so much about photography itself, i.e., the photograph on the wall, this "translation" into book form strips away some meaning and a large portion of the effect. Both Museum Photographs and Portraits are recommended for larger art and photography collections, the former for its superior essay and the latter for its comprehensive look at this central series. For its broad overview, Still is highly recommended for all libraries. Doug McClemont, New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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