Somebody will probably really hate me for this, but the Struth show, well... Struth is an excellent photographer. Maybe his not quite as excellent of a director?, or maybe he should change casting agents? The five photographs, which make the current show at the Marian Goodman Gallery in 57th street, have this subtle feeling of discomfort about them. It was a bit like watching a movie and then one of the actors looks straight into the camera, a move not intended, and suddenly the magic is gone, there are zippers on the backs of monsters, the movie is a movie and not a magical world. The previously published Museum Photographs had a somehow magical feeling to them. The places were the long lived environments, the visitors were just visitors, and after generations the places will remain the same while new humans will move in same ways in front of some of the works of art. Struth’s intention to slow down, not to freeze time seems much better accomplished in his previous work. There is also a certain density fluctuation in the previously published photographs. People tend to crowd around certain pieces they know from books or from the catalogue, they tend to ignore great pieces of art that hang next to those with better reviews. The visitors in Struth’s Pergamon photographs seem like gas molecules, evenly distributed in rooms, because there was space and because they look nice as a composition. Some moving, some standing still, frozen in unusual interactions. (In Pergamon Museum I a visitor is shown a piece of sculpture by a restaurateur. They both look like a diorama from Madame Tussauds, taking on the role of a black hole in the viewer’s attention.) In the Pergamon Museum Photographs there are no real Pergamon visitors, there are actors, characters, types, a mixture of appropriateness. The museum turns into a backdrop, the proportions of importance flip. There seems to be some secret relationship between the photographer and his extras, not a love story between the photographer and the Architecture, or the , or time. I did not go into the show with the intention to be distracted by the actors, but I could not fight my perception of the photographs. I was not looking at the Pergamon, I was not even looking at Struth’s work anymore, I was engaged in finding characters from one image in the others. There is this young guy in blue and green puma sneakers who reappears in three out of the five images in the show. He is grouped with in different “interactions” every single time, plays a sly different role, but he is obviously the same guy, the same clothing. He points to something in the lower right corner of Pergamon Museum I (Which is, btw glued together from two pieces of paper, cutting some of the faces in half) and he is in the lower right corner looking towards the door in Pergamon Museum III. He sits on the bench in Pergamon Museum IV. I know this sounds petty, but there are at least three more people that were employed in various roles in various pictures, never changing clothes, making them quite distinguishable and distracting. I also know that these pictures will probably never hang together in one room again. They will find their way into museum collections and the private rooms of sophisticated collectors, one at a time. They look like what they probably even are, great art. They are quite excellent photographs, there is an almost natural amount of movement in most of them. They just have this uncomfortable aura of sly insecure dialogue in an otherwise perfect setting. Maybe if everything were off. Maybe if the titles were “the guy with blue-green sneakers I”, I would find it quite excellent. Or how about the idea to have new configurations of pictures, named differently. I guess this is a different concept to follow. Probably not by Struth.
The show is definitely worth a visit. It can be interesting to see how unnatural the configurations of visitors on Struth’s photographs seem at first, and how closely they resemble the natural movement of visitors in the gallery itself. Maybe the pictures are quite ingenious. Yes, they probably are. I am just seeing things again. I should just look and be amazed. I really tried. I tried. I will probably need to try again.
