Eleonor and Giles Robertson, Edinburgh

Thomas Struth

1987 · Chromogenic print · Photographs

Struth only photographs people after knowing them for many months or years and collaborates with them on every aspect of how they would like to be seen. For Struth, this elderly Scottish art historian and his wife were like Ur-forms of “the old learned bourgeoisie, [whose] ‘form of being in the world’ we could only imagine in the 19th century.” They have a relationship to art that is intimate, shared, and humanistic—a quality that drew Struth to them and was, according to the artist, significant in the genesis of his Museum Photographs as well.

Artist

Thomas Struth

Date

1987

Medium

Chromogenic print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel and Hideyuki Osawa Gift, 2010