THOMAS STRUTH

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Thomas Struth at Potsdamer Strasse 77-87 in Berlin. This exhibition offers visitors a new and, at times, surprising insight into Struth’s oeuvre over the past four decades.

April 25 – June 21, 2025

Thomas Struth’s work is characterised by his long-term and careful pursuit of themes that revolve, in various guises, around the relationship between people and their environment. His photographs, which harmonise forms of documentation and contemplation, capture today’s society through images of cultural spaces, as well as the natural world, portraiture and places of industrial and technological innovation.

The most recent work in the exhibition, Hinakapoʻula, Hawaiʻi 2024, draws viewers into the depths of densely wooded Hawaiian mountains. In contrast, Semi Submersible Rig, DSME Shipyard, Geoje Island 2007 depicts an industrial megastructure on the southern coast of South Korea. Its monumental size and four mighty pillars are emphasised by the perspective of the steel colossus which stretches up to the upper edge of the picture.

The earliest portraits in the exhibition, taken in the 1980s, constitute some of the artist’s most rarely seen works. Struth has long been interested in the depiction of people, as exemplified in his celebrated Family Portraits, which convey the intricacies of family dynamics. By contrast, the portraits in this exhibition focus on the relationship between subject and photographer. They seek to capture the presence of the individual and thus make visible an incomprehensible yet universally recognisable facet of humanity.

The New Pictures from Paradise represented in this exhibition date from the early 2000s, the decade that saw a heightened awareness of the fragility and importance of the natural world. In these photographs, Struth aims to depict a diversity so dense that individual components are no longer identifiable to the human eye and an impression of inaccessibility prevails instead.