Thomas Struth: Audience

Audience is the title of Thomas Struth's new series of museum photographs taken on the occasion of an exhibition at the Galleria dell' Accademia in Florence marking the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo's David. Instead of different museums all over the world, the work now concentrates on one single place: the Galleria dell’ Accademia in Florence. Initially, the focus was on the dialogue between artworks and audience, while the camera is now exclusively focused on the groups of visitors, who are wondering at Michelangelo’s David in their summer outfits. The central object of their gaze is left out of the image, but exerts its influence invisibly on the postures of the body, the raised faces and the places the visitors occupy in the hall. Struth masterly exposes a complex of different relations, the relation between the visitors (in groups, couples or alone); the way people socially behave in a gallery space; the relation to the art piece. An interesting aspect in addition to this is the functioning of the worldwide tourism that so clearly comes to the front in ‘Audience’. The highlights from European Art History attract people from all over the world, but despite the presence of different nationalities the uniformity is striking. These extremely concentrated photographs show that both the seemingly banal and beauty can go surprisingly hand in hand with moments of a very personal experience.