Thomas Struth

One continuous subject of Thomas Struth's complex photographic oeuvre is the group portrait. Initially, he photographed people from the circle of his close friends and acquaintances, whom he asked to sit for him at least as duos. Soon the groups grew to feature entire families, families from outside Europe, and from other social strata. Encounters with artists, collectors and museum staff all gave Struth an occasion to create group portraits that bear comparison with the great examples set by Velazquez through to Goya. Transposed onto a modern medium and set in our present world, Struth's large-format family portraits exhibit an undeniably representative character. The need to present oneself as an individual in the framework of a hierarchical order remains manifest even in the ostensibly most relaxed of groupings.