Thomas Struth is a German born photographer who is one of Germany’s recognised photographers. Struth’s wide range of work includes cityscapes, lanscapes and family portraits. Struth trained at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1973 til 1980 where he first studied painting under Peter Kleemann and, from 1974, Gerhard Richter, a German visual artist.
Struth’s work mainly uses daylight so that there is no strong contrasts of light or shadows in his pictures, creating a very natural and clean look to his work.
(Above) In 2012, Struth produced this portrait of the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to be exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery. You can tell that only natural light is used in this portrait. This makes the portrait look clean and allows the subjects to be the main focus of the picture. By allowing some of the dark background to be part of the picture, Struth is allowing the subject matter to take centre stage.
(Above) This portrait of a family by Struth echoes the portrait of the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh. The same technique of a dark background with natural light being used to illuminate the subject matters.
Something else I have noticed about these two portraits is how the levels are very similar. In the portrait of the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, they are both sitting down, creating an even spread of subject matter across the picture. Again, in the portrait of the family, the children are at the same level of the parents. Instead of holding her daughter, the mother has places her on the same, possibly to change the mould of the picture, as if the daughter was being held the picture would not be as interesting or intriguing.
(Above) This portrait of Hannah Erdrich-Hartmann and Jana-Maria Hartmann is part of the ongoing series of portraits Struth has taken of his friends which began in the 1980’s. Again, the light is very flat in this portrait, which makes the subject matter the main focus of the picture. Again natural light has been used. However, as the nature of the portrait seems more personal than others, black and white seems appropriate to hone in on those emotions that this mother and daughter are conveying in this picture.
FNDHarryKeohane 