As part of my research for assignment 3 where the focus was shooting indoor public spaces in London I set about looking for photographers that have worked have carried out extensive work on indoor spaces.
When I started to think about photographing indoors and public spaces, I recalled a visit I made to the Whitechapel Gallery last year to see the work of German photographer Thomas Struth.
Struth has worked in various interiors from museums to places of worship, space stations to industrial factories. An image of the Pantheon in Rome sticks out in my mind where he plays with the sheer size of the building and the people standing to admire it. I find the rich colours in this image very appealing and the first thing that grabbed my attention.
Although his work involved a level of interaction between the people in his shot and the place they occupy I feel that some of his work is relevant to my assignment on building spaces.
After encountering several unsuccessful attempts to produce photographs with visitors in the Pergamon Museum in the 1990s, he decided to stage the event and in turn a series of photographs in various museum spaces. These include the Pantheon series and are among the very few museum photographs where the position of the people has been completely orchestrated by the photographer.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. When I first saw the image of the Pantheon I found it interesting to look at the people to see what they are doing or looking at. You feel cheated in a way to discover that this is not a natural occurring event by one manipulated my the photographer.
His work extends from this into the world of industrialisation and technology where we see the inside of the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Caneveral. I think his images of factory interiors are amazing and lead us to contemplate the complexity of every day products we may take for granted and the complexity involved in producing them. It also works as a milestone to see how we have evolved.
I have planned to shoot some museums for my assignment and unlike Struth I will not be orchestrating any of them. If given the opportunity of doing so I'm not sure how I would feel about it. However, what I will take from his work is the way in which he illustrate space and its uses.
Thomas Struth
Photographs 1978 - 2010
Whitechapel Gallery exhibition information
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