Photographer Thomas Struth (b. 1954), one of the most intriguing, challenging, and gifted artists to emerge from Europe in the past two decades, has created a beautiful and distinctive body of images depicting the world - its buildings, people, society, and culture - in its present moment of perpetual change. Unlike many of his contemporaries who have investigated photography's fictional potential, Struth has adhered to a straightforward yet formally refined approach that makes his viewers become aware of their world in often entirely new ways. This catalogue is the first to encompass Struth's entire body of work, dating from the late 1970's to the early 2000's. His early black-and-white photographs of deserted city streets, his psychologically penetrating portraits of individuals and families, his renowned "museum pictures," and his large-format color landscapes of nature and industry from around the globe are all represented in this unsurpassed collection of images. Engaging essays by well known photography and art experts chronicle Thomas Struth's career: Charles Wylie examines the development of Struth's art and places him in the context of photographic history of the last century; Maria Morris Hambourg and Douglas Eklund review the artist's aesthetic and intellectual influences and maturation; and Ann Goldstein investigates the role portraiture has played in Struth's art. This survey attests to the unmistakable importance of his photographs and his valued place in the history of photography and contemporary art.

Thomas Struth: 1977-2002

Arts & Photography

Maria Morris Hambourg

Douglas Eklund

Ann Goldstein

Charles Wylie

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Dallas Museum of Art

This handsome book is the first comprehensive examination of the Pictures Generation, a loosely knit group of artists working in New York from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The overarching subject of the work of these artists was imagery itself―how pictures not only depict but also shape how we perceive the world and ourselves. The collective achievement of this group is an extremely important chapter in the history of contemporary art. Born into an expanding media and consumer culture and educated in the strategies of Minimal and Conceptual art, the artists of the Pictures Generation, including Robert Longo, Richard Prince, David Salle, and Cindy Sherman, chose to return to representation, addressing the rhetorical, social, and psychological functions of the image across all media (photography, painting and sculpture, drawings and prints, film and video, and music and performance). While the careers of these artists are typically considered in isolation, this catalogue traces their complex interrelationships and mutual development―beginning with the emergence of a group sensibility characterized by techniques of distancing and theatricality and ending with a resurgence of painting by mostly male artists (which was contested by women artists working in media such as video, photography, and installation). Featured artists:•Ericka Beckman •Dara Birnbaum •Barbara Bloom •Eric Bogosian •Glenn Branca •Troy Brauntuch •James Casebere •Sarah Charlesworth •Rhys Chatham •Charlie Clough •Nancy Dwyer •Jack Goldstein •Barbara Kruger •Louise Lawler •Thomas Lawson •Sherrie Levine •Robert Longo •Allan McCollum •Paul McMahon •Matt Mullican •Richard Prince •David Salle •Cindy Sherman •Laurie Simmons •Michael Smith •James Welling •Michael Zwack

The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984

History & Criticism

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Walker Evans

A tenant farmer's deprivation-lined face. Antebellum homes that have seen better days. The display windows of small-town main streets. The early subway commuter. Billboards. The images made by photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975) are icons of national identity that have shaped Americans' views of themselves and directly influenced important currents of modern art. This major catalogue--published to accompany a retrospective exhibition originating at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and traveling to San Francisco and Houston--presents the full range of Evans's work, from his 1920s black-and-white street scenes of anonymous urban dwellers to the color photographs of signs and letter forms from his final years.
 Soon after he returned from Paris to New York City in 1927, Evans began contributing to the development of American photography. He captured the substance of people and buildings with a spare elegance that is utterly unpretentious. His gaze is serious but often amused as well, direct yet never simple. During the 1930s, Evans traveled throughout the South to chronicle the effects of economic hardship. The time that he and writer James Agee spent with Alabama sharecropper families yielded an evocative, honest record of the Great Depression, which was published in book form as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). Evans then turned his lens back on New Yorkers, photographing subway riders with a camera hidden in his coat. He continued to influence American self-perception as staff photographer for Fortune from 1945 until he accepted a professorship at Yale in 1965.
 Evans--who always chose art over what he criticized as artiness--wrote, in Photography (1969), "Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts. This man is in effect a voyeur by nature; he is also reporter, tinkerer, and spy."
 Although his work has received many awards, been enshrined in the best museums, and been exhibited on several continents, Evans's total corpus is only now being fully examined. This important book revises our appreciation of Evans by presenting previously unknown material in an accessible context. Essays by Maria Morris Hambourg, Jeff L. Rosenheim, Doug Eklund, and Mia Fineman offer novel insights into the sources and legacy of Evans's work. The result is a superb exploration of what was achieved by one of our finest, mostly deeply American artists.

Mia Fineman

Jeff L. Rosenheim

Individual Artists

Princeton University Press

The catalog that accompanied an exhibition at the Met featuring items from the then acquired Walker Evans archives. Metropolitam Museum of Art/Princeton University Press, 2000. 318 pages; b&amp;w photos throughout; 10 x 11.5 inches. Bibliography, index.

Photography & Video

Metropolitan Museum of Art / Princeton University Press

This handsome book is the first comprehensive examination of the Pictures Generation, a loosely knit group of artists working in New York from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The overarching subject of the work of these artists was imagery itself—how pictures not only depict but also shape how we perceive the world and ourselves. The collective achievement of this group is an extremely important chapter in the history of contemporary art. Born into an expanding media and consumer culture and educated in the strategies of Minimal and Conceptual art, the artists of the Pictures Generation, including Robert Longo, Richard Prince, David Salle, and Cindy Sherman, chose to return to representation, addressing the rhetorical, social, and psychological functions of the image across all media (photography, painting and sculpture, drawings and prints, film and video, and music and performance). While the careers of these artists are typically considered in isolation, this catalogue traces thei

The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press

Troy Brauntuch

A member of the so-called “Pictures Generation,” Troy Brauntuch (born 1954) makes appropriated works that, by removing or adding context, can, on one hand, empty out culturally charged icons, and on the other hand, supply seemingly innocuous material with massive charge. Brauntuch's work 1 2 3 provides a useful example of the tactics he likes to employ; it consists of screenprints of a set of fairly unremarkable sketches―a tank, a vestibule, a stage set―which turn out to have been drawn by one Adolf Hitler. This semiotic standoff between innocuous artwork and not-so-innocuous author compels the viewer to ponder the constructions of significance one so often unthinkingly performs when looking at art―constructions that Brauntuch has consistently sabotaged throughout his 30-year career. This first survey of Brauntuch's work includes essays by Johanna Burton and Douglas Eklund, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's critically acclaimed 2009 Pictures Generation exhibition.

Johanna Burton

JRP|Ringier

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Douglas Eklund. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Douglas Eklund