Robert; Gibson, Ralph; Goldin, Nan; Grossman, Sid;
Gursky, Andreas; Hine, Lewis; Hu ̈tte, Axel; Izis
(Israel Bidermanas); Kerte ́sz, Andre ́; Klein, William;
Kozloff, Max; Krull, Germaine; Lartigue, Jacques
Henri; Levitt, Helen; Mark, Mary Ellen; Model,
Lisette; Modernism; Photo League; Riis, Jacob; Ros-
ler, Martha; Ruff, Thomas; Sekula, Allan; Shahn,
Ben; Sontag, Susan; Struth, Thomas; van der Elsken,
Ed; Wall, Jeff; Weegee; Winogrand, Garry
Further Reading
Brougher, Kerry, and Russell Ferguson.Open City: Street
Photography Since 1950. Oxford: Museum of Modern
Art, 2001.
Kozloff, Max.New York: Capital of Photography. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Livingstone, Jane.The New York School Photographs 1936–
1963. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1992.
Mons, Alain.L’ombre de la ville: essai sur la photographie
contemporaine. Les Editions de la Vilette, 1994.
Stallabrass, Julian.Paris Pictured. London: Royal Acad-
emy Publications, 2002.
Tester, Keith, ed.The Flaˆneur. London: Routledge, 1994.
Westerbeck, Colin, and Joel Meyerowitz.Bystander: A His-
tory of Street Photography. Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 2001.THOMAS STRUTH
German
Thomas Struth is among the foremost artist/pho-
tographers to emerge from what has been called
the ‘‘German’’ School,’’ composed of the students
of renowned Du ̈sseldorf photographers Bernd and
Hilla Becher. The informal group includes Andreas
Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Axel Hu ̈tte, Candida Ho ̈fer,
and Struth—all of whom first came to prominence
during the 1980s. While the entire circle reflects the
Bechers’ desire to renew and revitalize analytical
documentary photography as it had existed before
World War II in the work of such pivotal figures as
August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt, and Albert Renger-
Patzsch, each individual has focused on aspects of
the Becher teachings in highly personal ways. Work-
ing, as Bernd and Hilla Becher always have, in
ongoing series, Struth refers to his photographs as
‘‘readable,’’ and expects investigation and interac-
tion on the part of viewers.
Thomas Struth attended the Kunstakademie Du ̈s-
seldorf from 1973–1980 and while there he studied
with Peter Keetman, Bernd Becher (then a professor
at the academy whose wife, also a trained photogra-
pher, shared in his teaching), and Gerhard Richter,
who taught painting. In 1978, the school provided a
scholarship for Struth’s residency at P.S. 1 Studios,
Long Island City, New York, where he embarked
upon a series of urban architectural scapes that he
would continue in Europe and Japan, in addition to
other American cities. These black-and-white street
photographs, while displaying the heritage ofNeue
Sachlichkeitor the ‘‘New Objectivity’’ movement of
the 1930s and the tonal qualities found in the
Bechers’ exquisitely refined portraits of industrial
architecture, lack the frontal centering of the image
and, instead, employ the large-camera format and
extreme perspective to invite the viewer to place him-
self in the scene.
It was a practice that would quickly distinguish
Struth’s work from that of Ruff and Gursky, who
are known for a more frontal, minimalist formalism;
from Ho ̈fer, who developed a number of series
topics, settling primarily on deep-space views of
interior architecture; and from Hu ̈tte, whose formal,
manipulated, Renaissance-perspective views are con-
structs depicting anonymous architecture. Architec-
tural spaces, and on occasion portraiture, however,
have long been common threads linking the diverse
aesthetics of the ‘‘German School.’’
Struth’s first influential images—including Crosby
Street, New York 1978;West 44thStreet, New York
1978 ;andBroadway at 22ndStreet, New York 1978—
were made during the period of the P.S. 1 fellowship,
during which time he was also given his first major
solo exhibition,Thomas Struth: Streets of New York
(P.S. 1/Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Long
Island City, 1978).STREET PHOTOGRAPHY