19.01.08 | 28.04.08

Audience 08 Florence 2004 Audience 09 Florence 2004 VIA GIOVANNI TAPPIA Naples 1989 VICO DEI MONTI Naples 1988 Paradise 1 (Pilgrim Sands) 1998 Via Del Parco Margherita, Naples 1988 Via Della Sanità Naples 1988 Corso Vittorio Emanuele Neapel 1989 Via Vannella Gaetani Naples 1988 Via Giuseppe Verdi Milan 1992 Via Emilio Cornalia (Mit Hochhaus) Milan 1992 The Consolandi Family Milan 1996 New York 2001 The Lingwood & Hamlyn Family London 2001 The Richter Family 1 Köln 2002 The Falletti Family Florence 2005 The Okutsu Family In Western Room Yamaguchi 1996 Veddeler Brückenstrasse Hamburg 1986 Via Monte Cardonet Rome 1988 Via Guglielmo (Mit Lkw) Rome 1988 Via San Giovanni A Mare Neaples 1988 Le Lignon (Horizontal) Geneve 1989 Via Emilio Cornalia Milan 1992 Piazza Virgilio Mailand 1998 Friedrich-Engels-Strasse Leverkusen 1980 Kanzlerstrasse 1, Duisburg 1989 Leipziger Strasse Essen 1989 Kunsthistorisches Museum 3 Wien 1989 Louvre 4 Paris 1989 Art Institute Of Chicago 1 Chicago 1990 Museo Del Prado 8-1 Madrid 2005 Museo Del Prado 8-2 Madrid 2005 Museo Del Prado 8-3 Madrid 2005 Museo Del Prado 8-4 Madrid 2005 Museo Del Prado 8-5 Madrid 2005 Paradise 9 1999 Paradise 22 2001 Stanze Di Raffaello 2 Rome 1990 Galleria Dell’ Accademia 1 Venice 1992 Cerro Morro Solar Lima / Peru 2003 Pasaje Gaspar Lima / Peru 2003 Calle Wakulski Lima / Peru 2003 Plaza Elguera Lima / Peru 2003 Pasaje Sta. Rosa Lima / Peru 2003 Jiron Cailloma Lima / Peru 2003 Drammen 1 Drammen/ Oslo 2001 Manzhouli Inner Mongolia, China 2002 Las Vegas 1 Las Vegas, Nevada 1999 Pudong Shanghai 1999 Chong Wen Meng Dong Beijing 1996 Hazienda Rio Palpa Palpa / Peru 2003 Paradise 30 2005

Thomas Struth

The Ayvar Family Lima, S.M.P / Peru

2005

Courtesy :

Using the same large format as for his cityscapes, in the second half of the eighties Struth began a series of portraits in colour and in black and white of individuals and family groups. The latter specifically grew out of a project of collaboration with the psychoanalyst Ingo Hartmann in 1982, which consisted in analyzing the snapshots brought by Hartmann’s patients to therapy. The result is images whose value as psycho-social documents is clearly related to the work of the German August Sander (1876–1964), who in the complex "mosaic" of social types in Das Antlitz der Zeit [Face of Our Time, 1929] conceived a true collective portrait of Germany in the second and third decades of the twentieth century.
In these portraits Struth uses relatively long exposure times, adding clarity and contrast to the individual details and achieving a hypnotic intensity in the expressions of the subjects. The long exposure times, the use of colour and the large format recover a relationship with portraiture in the pictorial tradition, because they help establish a direct, almost invasive, connection with the viewer, eliminating the effect of instantaneity. The fact that he knows the people he is portraying and the decision to leave each subject the possibility to decide how they want to be represented allows the artist to eventually obtain eloquent poses rich in significance, revealing emotional automatisms and relational dynamics or adherence to social and cultural codes of representation.
These are poses in which each sitter reveals the image they want to give of themselves and implicitly their historical and critical relationship with photography, its history and mythology. Then in the family group each individual relates to the others in a dialectic that connects the specifics of interpersonal relationships within every individual family with the structure of the hierarchical order and conflicts between generations. This means the portraits range from the informal pose, almost in movement, of the Faletti family to the austere and classical in the perfect balancing of the positions of the Richter family, and the formalization of the patriarchal role of oldest member of the Consolandi family.
 

The Consolandi Family Milan

1996

The Okutsu Family In Western Room Yamaguchi

1996

The Lingwood & Hamlyn Family London

2001

The Richter Family 1 Köln

2002

The Falletti Family Florence

2005

Geldern (Basso Reno) 1954
Born at Geldern in 1954, Thomas Struth began his artistic training by studying painting under Peter Kleemann and Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf ...
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