Struth

Commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London, it fits quite neatly into Struth's family series insofar as it captures a similar, but perhaps more heightened, kind of relaxed formality.

Thomas Struth: photos so complex 'you could look at them forever' 2011

Last month, the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh unveiled Struth's diamond jubilee portrait of the Queen and Prince Philip.

Thomas Struth: photos so complex 'you could look at them forever' 2011

We only see Mr. Struth's shoulder as he gazes at Albrecht Dürer's famous Renaissance self-portrait from 1500.

Perusing Street Photography Margaret Studer 2011

Instead, he began photographing his hometown, Düsseldorf, and showed the results to both Richter and the great Bernd Becher, whose own photographs of industrial buildings and towers, taken with his wife, Hilla, the young Struth had never seen.

Thomas Struth: photos so complex 'you could look at them forever' 2011

At Sotheby's Feb. 15, "Alte Pinakothek, Self Portrait" 2000 by German photographer Thomas Struth was estimated at £200,000-£300,000, and fetched £421,250.

Perusing Street Photography Margaret Studer 2011

Finally in the show is the recent, enormous Thomas Struth double portrait photograph of the queen and the 90-year-old Prince Philip, sitting on a sofa.

Portraying an Enigma Paul Levy 2011

"Spaces: Photographs by Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth" presents two very different, austerely composed inquiries into the nature of public space and what we do there.

At the Clark, Social Commentary Made Beautiful Karen Wilkin 2011

Yet the current offerings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, amid the rolling landscape here, include works by Camille Pissarro, photographs by Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth, and "tapestries" by El Anatsui.

At the Clark, Social Commentary Made Beautiful Karen Wilkin 2011

Thomas Struth 'Museo del Prado 8-3 Madrid' (2005) by Thomas Struth It's all thought-provoking and undoubtedly true—a series of tough-minded drawings, titled "Turpitudes Sociales" (social disgraces), were made as political instruction for two of his nieces—but the best works claim our attention for their aesthetic merit, not their political subtexts.

At the Clark, Social Commentary Made Beautiful Karen Wilkin 2011

Studying painting as a young man, Struth realised that he was "making big super-realist photographic paintings that just seemed pointless and a bit stupid".

Thomas Struth: photos so complex 'you could look at them forever' 2011