Chapter 5

thomas struth's museum photographs





Chapter 5 revolves around the description and analysis of three photographic projects by Thomas Struth between 1989 and 2004. Micheal Fried dissects them in chronological order although this order seems to be a heightened way of concluding with the more successful latest body Audience. Fried's main argument in this chapter is about the relationship between the spectators in Struth's photographs and the setting they are in. The first body discusses the relationship to the audience of paintings and how the spectators exist in a different "world" than the paintings they are viewing. The second discusses the way Struth's Pergamon Museum photographs are staged and what that means to the audience and how that affects the way the work was reviewed critically. And lastly Struth's Audience photographs are spoken as a mix of the successful working parts of the two previous bodies of work.

The first project which Fried refers to as the "classic museum photographs" are large format color photographs of spectators, generally from behind, viewing famous paintings. Fried begins the section by noting that commentators often say that Struth is trying to put the audience on the same level as the subject within the paintings. Fried quotes art historian Hans Belting saying that we look at painting and photography with different eyes however when faced with looking at both in Struth's photographs the separate eyes are transformed into a way of looking at photography the same way we view painting. Fried continues by saying that most reviews of the museum photographs have centered around the idea that Struth is intertwining photography and painting and that looking at Struth's images you are engaging in a revealing of the lack of boundaries between the two mediums. Of course Fried is in disagreement with the critique he chooses to exemplify. Belting's reading is the opposite of Fried's. Fried believes that Struth has deliberately left inside the frame certain things or people that formally are disconnected from the paintings. Essentially that the photographs do not place the audience of the paintings inside of them. Belting states that Kunsthistorisches Museum 3, Vienna, 1989 shows the white haired man having a conversation with the sitter of the painting which is him continuing the idea that Struths work connects the photographs to the paintings.



Fried responds that the sitter within the painting does engage the audience when viewed completely frontally. However Struth has shot the photograph at a very steep angle from the work therefor inversely creating less of a connection of the museum spectator and the sitter in the painting. Fried is trying to explain how the man within the photograph is actually not having a conversation.

Between 1996 and 2001 Struth made work at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Fried does not describe the second set within the framework that he uses to read the first set. With the second series Fried is not as interested with the otherness of the spectators in the photographs and the sitters in the paintings. Because these works are all staged by Struth, Fried has a different group of previous critique to help shape this section of the chapter.



The spectators were arranged because general viewers would all have headphones on and would be moving around too quickly for Struth's large format camera to capture well. Fried uses a critique of the Pergamon work by Peter Schjeldahl to help grapple with the topic of how sitters react to staged versus unexpected image making. Schjeldahl writes that self consciousness of being photographed causes the subject to be unnatural and therefore unsuccessful. He also claims to have had this reaction to the work on a purely responsive level before even finding out that they were staged. Another critique of the work calls Struth's images as "Faking". Fried states that the reviewers personal distaste with the work did not go as far as to consider why they disliked the stagedness. "("Where poses are not expected" is the crucial qualification: it is as if, faced with seemingly straight photographs dealing with absorptive themes, viewers unthinkingly crave the seduction of the human subject' expected obliviousness to being beheld.


The third and final set of Struth's images that are looked at are in a series called "Audience". The images were produced in Florance, summer 2004. These images are of spectators facing almost head on to Struth while he stands behind the red rope or barrier that surrounds very large pieces of sculptural work. The photographs do not have the object within them that the audience is looking at.



Fried is essentially saying that someone how Struth has created images that do appear as if the viewer and the sculpture they are viewing have some sort of communicative relationship. Fried attributes this to the shear mass of what they are looking upwards at and also how some of the viewers are addressing the sculpture and some are directly addressing the viewer of the photograph.

Freedom Fried

I couldn't think of anything else clever to play off of Micheal's last name (although I am aware its not pronounced fried as in my favorite way to prepare chicken).



Anyway, the biggest idea that stuck with me throughout the weekend after reading Introduction and three beginnings as well as listening to Walead Beshty was a reminder about a photograph being an object. I have also started thinking about the words we use to describe photographs and we use the word image a lot. But Walead Beshty reminded me that image is not a physical thing, or an object. Image is a reflection of something, an idea of what something looks like or what it is associated with. Although, I suppose in a sense image is something that exists within a photograph, and a photograph can obtain for the viewer an image of a person, place, ect. (I need to think about this one a little more)




The reading, as everyone else who has posted already states, is the introduction to Micheal Fried's Why Photography Matters As Art As Never Before as well as chapter 1 three beginnings. The intro describes Frieds background and his relationship to photography. The three beginnings dissect the modes of thought that structure the way the book was written. The first beginning uses connections between Suigimoto's theater photographs, Cindy Shermans film stills, and Jeff Walls movie audience to discuss ideas about viewing distance, theatricality, and finally relating back to the importance of considering the work made by other artists as a way of understanding and placing meaning on your own or another artists work. This is brought on by Fried's observation of Suigimoto's lack of describing his work within any frame of connection to the work done by other photographers. The second beginning revolves around the period when photography starts being considered "Art" photography which is marked by a larger scale of presentation for photography and to be on the wall, framed, in an attempt to be viewed by the traditional way spectators viewed paintings. The third and final beginning is exemplified by three texts. In extreme summary the first boils down to a discussion about absorption (of subject and viewer), and truthfulness. The second text is a tale involving voyeurism and that what is changed once viewed. Lastly, words of Susan Sontag provide ideas about photography's abilities and inabilities of showing war. Its a back and forth between showing something horrific and then the viewer being passive of proactive. In which case, the contemporary display of loss is usually dealt with by an active mental response and a passive physical one.

Differentiation of Modern, Postmodern, and Contemporary

I chose to use a simple lay out of text to visualize a differentiation between modern, postmodern, and contemporary.

Contemporary can be thought of as the new modern because it is a product of modernity. As if modernity while looking to the future ran into itself while time traveling. This interaction with itself through the years of postmodernism joined to create the contemporary. I know this reads as a bit of a stretch but it seems logical that if a movement is so fixated on the future than at some point there is a moment of self recognition placed in the now.

In Terry Smiths Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity it is explained that remaining parts of modernism and postmodernism are embedded within the cultures of art makers and observers which shapes the idea of contemporaneity. Modernism and postmodernism allow for the differentiation of the contemporary.

"tiring juggernaut" refers to the DIA:Beacon which is commenting on its want to hold on to modernity and "swarming of attack vehicles" in relation to Documenta 11 which is compared to the place where culture meets contemporary art. DIA:Beacon holds tight to the history of a clunky and much less connected world while Documenta 11 is the collective effort of an entire group of swarming vehicles that come from a networked but diverse people. It is decolonization and the start of globalization that Smith really pin points as the back bone of contemporary. These entities create the mass influx of ideas as well as a place for them to be harnessed and developed.


Reviews discusses Fried's book as pertaining to the spectators distance to an image and Azoulay's engages with the idea of the ethical responsibility of a photographic spectator. The works are however paralleled for they both discuss the ideas that revolve around the photographic spectator. Fried presents the idea that contemporary photography as art does not directly address the viewer therefore does not solicit a response. Azoulay's book about the obligation of a viewer discusses the responsibility of a spectator when confronted with a loaded depiction of loss or destruction. This book is about how images confront viewers yet its civil power is lost when the viewer remains only a spectator. Essentially the power of an image is lessened by passiveness.