Thomas Struth

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Arigato Michael-san</br>

Arromanches, Dec. 2002.

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<p>It's infectious this art stuff.....</p>

First of all, it doesn't seem to me that Nigel is a troll.

 

Second of all, he is not the only person who is dumbfounded by the Streuth's reputation.

 

And I did see Streuth's works in person...at the recent Met exhibition. I went with an absolutely open mind, not having seen most of the works in reproduction before.

 

They are not "bad" photographs. But, in my opinion, there is absolutely nothing remarkable about his cityscapes other than their size.

 

I will keep an open mind, however, because I am a little bit curious about this phenomemon.

 

Btw, I am also unimpressed by another favorite of the current critique circles: Richard Avedon's white-background portraits of famous people. Again, not "bad" photographs; but lacking in emotional or artistic content, in my opinion, unless you are moved by the sight of powerful people. Shall we start another argument?

One thing about Struth's landscapes, especially the Paradise series, is they explore landscape from within a different tradition than is normally popular within photography - especially N American photography.

 

A huge amount of landscape photography is in a direct line from the whole romantic Hudson Valley/giant redwood/Promised Land school of painting of Bierstadt (to some extent), Church and Cole et al. A style of painting that wasn't popular for terribly long and whose influence on landscape painting wasn't all that great in the long run. But its influence on photography was much stronger. Ansel Adams is the most obvious example, but almost every Yosemite/Half Dome/heroic waterfall/forest glade photograph descends from this influence. For some unknown reason it stuck - which probably wasn't a good thing - as a school of landscape painting it had it's place and time, but was overblown even then. Now for every Adams impersonator it has become the standard approach

 

By contrast, many of the early western landscape photographers, such as O'Sullivan or even Witkins (despite his giant redwoods) were, by comparison, un-influenced to the same extent and their work often seems minimalist and post-modern when put side by side with the later Ansel Adams school.

 

This is merely perpetuated in the colour version we find today, with romantic/heroic photographs of canyons, mesas and long-exposure waterfalls. It's really a creative dead end doomed to repeating what was, as an artistic movement, already dead when Ansel adopted it.

 

Struth (and others) by comparison are mining other rich (and possibly still vibrant) seams in the landscape art tradition to inform their approach to the subject. Struth's Paradise photographs, for example, very obviously have their roots in the Germanic landscape traditions, with a very different understanding of forest and place than the normal N American one, following from Altdorfer through Casper Friedrich to Anlsem Kiefer. Struth then clearly brings his own view and vision, building on this tradition, to the project.

 

I've looked at Mr Turner's landscapes (the photographer, not the incomparable painter) and from both his photographs and his words, it appears he has a very shallow understanding of not only the landscape, but also of the various photogrpahic and artistic traditions and movements.

Interesting discussion I stumbled upon. There is one glaring ommission from all of these posts I believe...and that would be the ability to actually produce a piece that is 6 by 8 feet, with serious detail, and serious color tones. A few mentioned that because it's big, doesn't make it good - but as Gursky also - BIG is an integral part of the process, AND the art. It is also craft. I've been moving in the direction of big myself, and I am a total amateur, but I honestly don't like small photos. They bug me. I don't like small paintings either. Now that I've decided to pursue making prints that have serious footage - i've come to the conclusion that this is SERIOUS business. I've been researching for a month now, and still haven't developed a plan as to how I am going to render certain ideas in that size. I've heard different explanations of how they do it, but really - it's a serious undertaking from what I can gather. Some of gursky's newest work is pushing 20 feet in length. I think it's an integral part of the art, and I don't think most people have the wherewithal, understanding, or even ability to produce works so large. My 2 cents.