San Zaccharia Venedig 1995

Thomas Struth studied photography at the famed Düsseldorf Academy of Art together with Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff. These so-called 'Becher Students' picked up on the cool objectivity of their professors, the German photographer team of Bernd and Hilla Becher. In his popular series of museum and church interiors, Struth does not focus his attention on the interior itself, but rather on the visitors to these semi-public cultural sites. The way they gaze at and interact with the works of art exhibited within these ostentatious spaces is mirrored through our own gazes at the large-scale, colour photographs in which they are depicted. In all of his works, from his landscapes and street scenes, to his museum and church interiors, Struth focuses on ordinary themes and the banality of everyday life, while at the same time monumentalising these to grand proportions.