Photographer
Thomas Struth
German photographer known for museum and city series and large-format documentary projects.
Thomas Struth is a German photographer born in 1954 in Geldern. He studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Gerhard Richter and later with Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose conceptual approach shaped his practice. Struth is best known for large-scale, rigorously composed photographs that explore how humans interact with urban space, culture, and technology. His major series include “Unconscious Places,” black-and-white street scenes from cities worldwide, and “Museum Photographs,” which capture spectators within famous galleries. His color portraits, such as the Struth family series, and “Paradise” jungle images also gained acclaim. He has exhibited at institutions like MoMA and Tate Modern.
Selected Works & Key Projects
A source-backed introduction to individual photographs and significant bodies of work.
Key projects
Project · 1989–2005
Museum Photographs
Initiated in 1989, Museum Photographs places contemporary visitors and historically celebrated art within one photographic field. Struth generally waited for unarranged configurations of viewers and pictures, while a small number of later works used orchestrated figures. The project’s importance lies in treating museum looking itself as the subject: it reconnects canonical artworks with present-day bodies, attention, and social ritual. It merits selection because The Met described the series as a landmark group of large-scale color photographs and as central to Struth’s expansion of photography’s scale and ambition.
View source ↗
Project · 1985
Family Portraits
Begun with photographs made in Scotland and Japan in 1985–86, Family Portraits remains an open-ended body of work. Families choose the setting and framing with Struth, arrange themselves, and face the camera directly. The resulting pictures hold individual presence and family structure in productive tension rather than seeking a fleeting expression. This project merits selection because its procedures turn an everyday photographic form into sustained study of connection, self-presentation, and social context; museum accounts trace its conceptual background to research with psychoanalyst Ingo Hartmann.
View source ↗Project · 1998–2007
New Pictures from Paradise
New Pictures from Paradise began with eight rainforest photographs made at Daintree, northeastern Australia, in 1998, and ultimately comprised 36 large-scale works made across several countries through 2007. Dense vegetation fills the frame without offering an easy hierarchy or narrative. Struth described the series as his most intuitive body of work; its stated aim was sensory attention beyond identification or classification. It merits selection because it redirected his large-format practice from social spaces toward the demanding act of seeing an overcrowded natural field.
View source ↗Selected photographs
1977 · London, United Kingdom
Clinton Road, London
This gelatin silver print is an early example of Struth’s black-and-white urban photographs and is held by the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA characterizes this broader group as views of major cities in Germany, Japan, and the United States that register landscapes reshaped by postwar economic and social change. Chosen here as a 1977 London image, it establishes the early, unpopulated-street approach from which Struth built photographic portraits of cities. Its inclusion in MoMA’s collection confirms its institutional visibility within that foundational body of work.
Work source ↗1986 · Tokyo, Japan
Shinjuku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo
Shinjuku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo is a gelatin silver print made in 1986 and printed in 1989, in MoMA’s Department of Photography. MoMA situates it within Struth’s black-and-white views of postwar cities in Germany, Japan, and the United States, whose apparently unpeopled streets become portraits of countries altered by economic and social transformation after World War II. It merits selection because the Tokyo subject extends his analytic city practice beyond Europe and makes urban architecture carry the historical charge identified in MoMA’s gallery label.
Work source ↗1996 · Yamaguchi, Japan
The Okutsu Family in Tatami Room, Yamaguchi
The Okutsu Family in Tatami Room, Yamaguchi is a life-size chromogenic print in The Met’s collection. It portrays the family of Kiyoshi Okutsu, with the four sitters meeting the camera through prolonged direct gazes. A Met curator identifies the work as a particularly humanistic example of Family Photographs: each person remains autonomous, yet the image produces a sense of interdependence. It merits selection because it makes the series’ method and stakes unusually legible—family portraiture becomes a reciprocal encounter among sitters, photographer, and viewer.
Work source ↗1995 · Venice, Italy
San Zaccaria, Venice
In this 1995 chromogenic print, Giovanni Bellini’s 1505 San Zaccaria altarpiece anchors the church interior while visitors and worshippers establish its lived scale. The Met emphasizes Struth’s use of photography’s trompe-l’oeil capacity: Bellini’s painted niche seems to move forward into a space shared with contemporary figures. The photograph therefore joins sacred painting, architecture, and present observation rather than merely documenting a site. It merits selection as a concentrated demonstration of how Struth’s museum-related pictures test the relationship between photography and painting across five centuries.
Work source ↗1999 · Tokyo, Japan
National Museum of Art, Tokyo
National Museum of Art, Tokyo is a 1999 chromogenic print in The Met’s collection. It records Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People displayed behind glass during a Japanese-French exchange of treasures. The Met reads the arrangement as an encounter between the painting’s historical drama and a contemporary viewing situation resembling spectacle culture, while also recognizing the visitors’ respectful distance from a foreign work. It merits selection because the photograph makes cultural exchange, display design, and spectatorship inseparable parts of the image’s subject.
Work source ↗-
1973–1980
Education
Studies at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts
Struth attended the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts from 1973 to 1980. He initially trained in painting with Peter Kleemann and Gerhard Richter; from 1976 he studied in Bernd Becher’s class and concentrated on photography. This period establishes the educational transition from painting to the medium that would define his subsequent practice.
Source: Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen / Pinakotheken Verified Sep 4, 2026
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From 1977
Series
Begins large-format black-and-white cityscapes
After photographing people in Düsseldorf and other cities between 1974 and 1977, Struth began an early body of large-format black-and-white cityscapes in 1977. The Prado identifies architecture in these pictures as a bearer of past and present histories, and notes their use of central perspective and detailed description. This marks the emergence of urban space as a sustained photographic subject in his work.
Source: Museo Nacional del Prado Verified Sep 4, 2026
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1978
Career milestone
First artist-in-residence at P.S. 1 Studios
In 1978, Struth was the first artist-in-residence at P.S. 1 Studios in Long Island City. The Prado records that he made New York street scenes while living there, placing this residency within the early development of his urban photography. It is a meaningful early international appointment because it joined a formative period of study to sustained photographic work in New York.
Source: Museo Nacional del Prado Verified Sep 4, 2026
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1990
Exhibition
Participates in Future Dimension, Venice Biennale
Struth participated in Future Dimension at the Venice Biennale in 1990. Listed by his representing gallery among his international group exhibitions, this appearance documents his inclusion in a major recurring international exhibition at a relatively early point in his career. It is selected as a concise marker of the widening institutional circulation of his photographs.
Source: Marian Goodman Gallery Verified Sep 4, 2026
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1992
Exhibition
Participates in documenta IX
Struth participated in documenta IX in 1992. Marian Goodman Gallery identifies the exhibition among his international group-show history. Inclusion in documenta IX is a useful career milestone because it documents presentation within one of the large-scale international exhibitions through which contemporary artistic practices reach a broad institutional and public audience.
Source: Marian Goodman Gallery Verified Sep 4, 2026
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1993–1996
Career milestone
First Professor of Photography at Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe
From 1993 to 1996, Struth served as the first Professor of Photography at the newly founded Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe. The appointment records a teaching role at a new institution, alongside his established photographic practice. It is included as a professional milestone because it documents his contribution to photography education rather than an exhibition or award alone.
Source: Museo Nacional del Prado Verified Sep 4, 2026
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1997–1998
Award
Spectrum International Prize for Photography
Struth received the Spectrum International Prize for Photography from Stiftung Niedersachsen in 1997–1998. The award is documented by the Museo Nacional del Prado and recognizes his photographic work during a period when his city, portrait, museum, and landscape subjects had already become central to his practice. It provides a dated institutional recognition milestone in his career.
Source: Museo Nacional del Prado Verified Sep 4, 2026
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2002–2003
Exhibition
U.S. retrospective tour
A U.S. retrospective of Struth’s work toured from the Dallas Museum of Art to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2002–2003. This multi-museum presentation is a significant reception milestone because it records sustained institutional attention across major American museums rather than a single-venue exhibition.
Source: Marian Goodman Gallery Verified Sep 4, 2026
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2010–2012
Exhibition
Photographs 1978–2010 retrospective tour
The major retrospective Photographs 1978–2010 traveled from Kunsthaus Zürich in 2010 to K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf in 2011, and then to Whitechapel Gallery in London and Museu Serralves in Porto during 2011–2012. Its four-city itinerary made a long span of Struth’s work available for comparative viewing across major European institutions.
Source: Marian Goodman Gallery Verified Sep 4, 2026
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2016–2019
Exhibition
Nature & Politics international tour
Nature & Politics toured from 2016 to 2019 through Museum Folkwang in Essen, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Moody Center for the Arts in Houston, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and MAST Foundation in Bologna. The project presents photographs of scientific research and manufactured landscapes, documenting an expanded focus on science, technology, and environments shaped by human activity.
Source: Marian Goodman Gallery Verified Sep 4, 2026
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2017–2019
Exhibition
Figure Ground: largest exhibition to date
Figure Ground, described by Marian Goodman Gallery as Struth’s largest exhibition to date, opened at Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2017 and traveled to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2019. The Guggenheim presentation surveyed more than four decades and linked archival material with major bodies of work including Unconscious Places, Family Portraits, Museum Photographs, Audience, New Pictures from Paradise, and later projects.
Source: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Verified Sep 4, 2026
Representation
Marian Goodman Gallery
This gallery is Thomas Struth's principal representative, exhibiting his work in New York, London, and Paris. Through multiple solo shows of his urban and museum series, the gallery has helped establish Struth's international reputation and market presence as a leading contemporary photographer.
Verified 2026-09-04Wikipedia
Collection
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Museum of Modern Art in New York holds Thomas Struth's photographs in its permanent collection. His street scenes and museum interior photographs are represented, reflecting the institution's recognition of his role in late-twentieth-century art and photography.
Verified 2026-09-04Wikipedia
Collection
Tate
Tate in London possesses several large-scale works by Thomas Struth, such as examples from his Museum Photographs and city series. His photography is shown at Tate Modern and contributes to the museum's documentation of international contemporary practice.
Verified 2026-09-04Wikipedia
How Technology Shapes Our Understanding of Reality (opens a new site)
This TIME photo essay considers Struth’s Nature & Politics through photographs made between 2008 and 2013. It identifies technological systems, landscapes, and museums as fields brought together by the exhibition, and presents individual works from laboratories, industrial sites, a space center, an aquarium, and other constructed environments. The article is a focused editorial resource on the later work, emphasizing Struth’s use of photography to address the ambitions and complexity of human-made systems.
Thomas Struth: Making Time (opens a new site)
The Museo del Prado’s exhibition resource describes Making Time as a direct dialogue between Struth’s photographs and the museum’s celebrated galleries and artworks. It situates the project within his varied work of the preceding decade, naming flower still lifes, Museum Photographs, the Paradise landscapes, and landscapes of the American West. The page is valuable for examining how Struth’s museum-based photographs were presented within a historic collection rather than solely as autonomous contemporary images.
Thomas Struth (opens a new site)
MOCA’s page documents a mid-career survey comprising ninety-three photographs made from 1977 to 2002. It describes the exhibition’s organization around large color museum photographs, early black-and-white views of empty city streets, family portraits, and forest images. The resource is particularly useful for its concise account of the Museum Photographs: works made between 1988 and 1992 in European and American museums, titled for their locations rather than for the artworks depicted.
Thomas Struth (opens a new site)
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao’s exhibition page presents a survey spanning more than four decades of Struth’s practice. It connects his archival material with major bodies of work including Unconscious Places, Family Portraits, Museum Photographs, Audience, New Pictures from Paradise, This Place, Nature & Politics, and Animals. The page also identifies collaborative video installations and gives object-level information for selected works, making it a useful institutional introduction to the range and development of his photographic practice.
Meet the Artist: Thomas Struth (opens a new site)
Published as a resource alongside Guggenheim Museum Bilbao’s Thomas Struth exhibition, this conversation brings together Struth and Thomas Weski, co-curator of the retrospective. The museum describes the exhibition as a presentation spanning more than four decades and linking archival material to distinct groups of finished works. The video is therefore a useful curatorial entry point for viewers seeking an artist-and-curator discussion of the retrospective’s organization and the long arc of Struth’s practice.
Thomas Struth: To Keep Things From Dying (opens a new site)
Louisiana Channel’s in-depth interview follows Struth in his Berlin studio and addresses his work, career, and ideas about photography. Struth discusses beginning as a painter, moving to photography while studying at the Düsseldorf Academy, and his early New York street photographs. The accompanying text also outlines the breadth of projects addressed in the conversation, from family portraits and museum pictures to technologically complex environments. It is a substantial primary-source introduction to the artist’s own account of his working motivations.
Conversation with the Artist Thomas Struth (opens a new site)
The Jewish Museum Berlin provides a recording of a conversation with Struth held on 5 December 2019 in connection with This Place. The page identifies Theresia Ziehe, the museum’s curator of photography, as the initiator of the conversation. It frames Struth’s contribution to the exhibition through large-format color photographs made in Tel Aviv, the Golan Heights, Ramallah, and Nazareth, while connecting those images to subjects for which he is known, including technology, family, landscape, and architecture.
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