Audience 7 (Galleria Dell'Accademia), Florenz

Since the late 1970s, Thomas Struth has been creating photographs about humanity, its rituals and their relationship to the physical world. A student of Gerhard Richter and Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Struth blends documentary photographic methods, technological innovation, and conceptual strategies of display. In his Audiences series, Struth addresses art, tourism, and spectatorship. Mounting his camera at the base of Michelangelo’s iconic David at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Struth intervenes in the one-way perspective from the art consumer to the art object. The result is a constructed exchange in which the viewer takes on the point of view of the sculpture itself. Struth suggests that the treasures we flock to see may have a physical impact that extends beyond consumption into a social dynamic.