Thomas Struth’s “Nature & Politics” is a kaleidoscopic journey through landscapes. They range from Ramallah, a city in the central West Bank, to a Disneyland Resort in the Californian city of Anaheim.The leitmotif of Struth’s work has been capturing the ways in which people interact with the environment. His photographs of cities focus on the linearity and monumentality of the architecture. For example, in Paris (“Panorama 1, Beaugrenelle, Paris,” 1979, silver gelatin print) and Tokyo (“Shinju-ku, Tokyo,” 1986, also a silver gelatin print).The static, centralized compositions often present the cityscapes from a bird’s-eye view, shifting the perspective from everyday life scenes onto the purely aesthetic qualities of architecture.In “Nature & Politics,” Struth focuses on the “laboratories” of human imagination – spaces in which ideas become reality. The artist is particularly fascinated with spaces related to science, such as “Z-Pinch Plasma Lab, Weizmann Institute, Rehovot” (2011, inkjet on print) or “Study, Charité, Berlin” (2015, inkjet print). Devoid of any human presence, they point to the artificial materials, often invented to prolong human life – both their durability and actual fragility.The images presenting Disneyland Resort, such as “Mountain, Anaheim” (2013, chromogenic print) are used by Struth to draw attention to commodification of “imaginary” spaces of childhood. Here, the lack of human presence only heightens the artificiality of the man-made landscapes, designed to imitate the sentimental sceneries of Disney movies. Struth’s photos appear deceptively simple in their presentation of unadorned subject matter. Nevertheless, “Nature & Politics” draws the visitor’s attention to the complex co-dependency of human life and the architecture housing it.Thomas Struth’s “Nature & Politics” runs at Martin Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin from June 11 through September 18, 2016. For more information, see www.gropiusbau.de/
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