Museum Photographs

Thomas Struth’s Museum Photographs series, first published in 1993, is now available in a new edition enlarged by recent photographs. It presents large- format color photos taken between 1989 and 2002 in major museums across the world. The subject of these pictures is art—to be more precise: painting—and how it is presented and perceived in the context of the museum architecture. With their interrelated levels of perception, time, and subject matter, these photos prompt the viewer to investigate the very act of seeing and perceiving.The revised and enlarged second edition of the book adds 26 new pictures, some of them taken in museums, whereas others show the works at their original location in Venetian churches or the Vatican. Three scholarly essays by renowned art historians discuss the complex historical and socio-cultural questions that arise when viewing Struth’s Museum Photographs.