Audience, Florence

In the late 1980s, Struth traveled to Rome and Naples and for the first time his photographs focused on painting. Bringing both disciplines together, he examined how art restorers engage with the works they are working on, as illustrated by Restorers at San Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples (Restauratoren in San Lorenzo Maggiore, Neapel, 1988). In a way, this photograph marked the artist’s need to capture the encounter between viewers and artworks in specific places loaded with meaning. Along similar lines, the later series Museum Photographs (Museumsbilder) shows anonymous audiences as they look at famous works of art.

Willing to broaden this perspective, Struth saw an extraordinary opportunity in 2004, when the director of the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Franca Falletti, invited several artists—including Struth—to create artistic works in which they paid tribute to Michelangelo’s David (1501–04) on the occasion of the sculpture’s 500th anniversary. Struth directed the camera at the beholders to capture their gaze as if they were being observed by David himself. Using flash for the first time and reducing the exposure time, he focused on the viewers while minimizing everything around them, thus revealing the exact time of the viewer-artwork encounter. Even when David is absent from the image, hints of him can be picked up, reflected in some of the visitors’ glasses.

When looking at these photographs, we feel outsiders scrutinizing an audience for their reactions. However, we cannot take in everything that is going on, just as in real life, overlooking many details as we look at sets of objects without hierarchy. Struth’s photographs are kaleidoscopic compositions of human beings facing works of art and expressing their reactions through body language. Likewise, we are witnessing a recent past that is evident in the public's clothing and a present dominated by the trend of cultural tourism.

The four photographs in the Collection belong to Audience, Florence, 2004—the first of Struth’s three series focusing on the viewers. In the second series, dated in 2005, the artist takes a glance at visitors as they look at Leonardo’s Benois Madonna (1478–80) at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. In the third series, completed in 2005 as well, Struth moves the camera to the Prado Museum and some of Velázquez’s major works: Las Meninas (1656), The Spinners (1655–60), and The Surrender of Breda (1634–35), although in this case, the paintings are not hidden from view, but share the focus of the images with the visitors.