Thomas Struth

In this film, photographer Thomas Struth and book publisher, Lothar Schirmer, of Schirmer/Mosel, discuss Struth's collective exhibition for the SK Cultural Foundation at Media Park in Cologne, Germany.

Struth is one of the three pillars, including Thomas Ruff, and Andreas Gursky, fondly termed as "Strufski". All three are Alumni's of the Dusseldorf Art School, having learned photography in the master classes of famed pair, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and are credited for elevating the status, as well as the prices being paid for color photography prints today. In the early 1980s Struth added a new dimension to his work when he branched out from landscape, city scenes and daily scenes of people and started to photograph family portraits.

Struth was not proactively seeking to photograph as many families as possible, how many photographers approach this subject. He steadily became involved in what would become an unending project after a meeting with a friend, Ingo Hartmann, who is a psychoanalyst. As Struth himself says, "Photographing families is a relatively difficult and personal matter that requires a different approach than that of photographing a jungle or something that is inanimate. As a result, his family portraits attempt to show the underlying social dynamics within a seemingly still photograph. In developing the show for the SK Cultural Foundation, Struth's approach was not the least bit ordinary. Like a conductor enveloped in an orchestration of music, Struth likens his exhibit to the different executions within a classical musical composition; from the Overture to the Andante Moderato, the subtle changes in dynamics and soft-hued colors in his presentation engages viewers, inconspicuously conveying them to the next scene.