About the person
born 1954 in Geldern
lives and works in Berlin and New York
“Thomas Struth studied at Kunstakademie Dusseldorf from 1973 to 1980. In 1978 he was awarded the Academy’s first-ever scholarship for New York City where he created a series of black and white urban landscapes, that he presented in his first solo exhibition at P.S. 1 New York in the same year. In the mid-1980s he began a series of black and white and colour portraits of individuals and families that exemplify his believe that photography is a scientific tool of psychological research. This ongoing work on one hand investigates personal and cultural dynamics that shape our self-perception and on the other hand examines how our individual and collective identities shape this perception.
Following on from the portraits and under the influenced of contemporary art’s growing popularity Struth developed his most well-known series, the Museum Photographs (1989-2005): In large-scale colour photographs he captures groups and individuals looking at iconic works of Western art inside the most important museums in the world. These images mark the museum visit as complex social ritual of see-and-be-seen and address the existence of works in public collections.
During the last fifteen years, Struth has expanded his repertoire to include other subjects. Among these are: New Pictures from Paradise (1998-2007), religious and touristic gathering places (from 1998) and since 2007 images from the areas of basic research, science, industrial production and technique which investigate how the belief in progress presents itself as a group-dynamic process.
Important solo exhibitions of his works have among others been presented at Kunsthalle Bern (1987), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1994), Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes (1998), National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo and Kyoto (2000), Dallas Museum of Art (2002), Museo del Prado, Madrid (2007) as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2003 and 2014).
A large-scale retrospective travelled from Kunsthaus Zurich (2010) and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20, Dusseldorf (2011), to Whitechapel Gallery, London (2011), and the Museu Serralves in Porto (2011/12).”
Atelier Thomas Struth, Berlin
www.thomasstruth32.com
About the artwork
The monumental photographic work “Beam Line Zone 1, EHN 1, CERN, Prévessin-Moens” is part of his series “Nature & Politics,” which engages in a profound visual exploration of how human ambition, research, and the urge to master nature manifest themselves in highly complex physical structures. Knowledge continues to expand in an effort to conquer nature. For this series, Thomas Struth ventures into places normally inaccessible to the public, including research laboratories, operating rooms, and space stations. While human figures are deliberately excluded from the images, humanity is omnipresent in its creations. The images eschew dramatic effects and instead rely on extreme depth of detail and clarity, inviting an analysis of our globalized, technologized world.
“Beam Line Zone 1,” measuring approximately 170 x 436 cm, is an extremely large-format work. It depicts a particle beam line in the large EHN1 (Experimental Hall North Area 1) at CERN. It is a panoramic, immersive photograph that captures technical chaos—cables, pipes, magnets—within an almost orderly, aesthetic structure. The central focal point literally draws the viewer into the image.
The work was added to the Viehof Collection in early 2026, thereby complementing the 101-piece Winterthur series as well as the existing Paradise artworks in the collection that depict nature. More information about the Winterthur series is available on the News page (one of the posts below). >> You can find more about the Winterthur series here.