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拍品專文
Struth's fascination with the relationship between the observer and the observed is brought to the fore in this image from his acclaimed set of photographs from Vienna's vast Kunsthistorisches Museum. Unlike the other works in this series, and indeed many of Struth's other photographs of the busy interiors of the world's greatest museums, Kunsthistorisches Musuem III, Vienna portrays a rare moment of contemplative solitude in a public space. The elderly gentleman stares intensely at Rembrandt's Portrait of a Man trying to form a connection of sorts with the subject. By denying the man's face from the viewer's gaze Struth forces the viewer to focus our attention on the subject of the painting itself. Struth's composition overturns the conventions of traditional photography and portraiture by blurring the boundaries between the subject and the viewer, and questioning who is playing which role. Struth reinforces the notion of the ambiguous relationship between the observer and the observed by positioning his lens in such a way that the old man in the painting ignores his admirer's glances and instead staring intensely at the viewer situated outside of the two-dimensional picture plane, reinforcing the viewer role in this relationship. Indeed, the only person in Struth's composition who appears to be paying attention to the 'subject' of this composition is the magnificently ruffed women in the second portrait. Her gaze towards the white haired man completes Struth's clever reappraisal of the traditional relationship between the observed and the observer that has underpinned much of western art for centuries.
One of the most influential photographers of the last quarter century, Struth has returned again and again to the locations that reverberate with silence. Kunsthistorisches Musuem III, Vienna builds on his Museum series, which he began in the late 1980s, when he began photographing visitors in museums looking at works of art. In time, the size of these images began to grow and the colors became less intense. Images of people in motion began to blur, often mimicking the movement, dynamism and sheer visual impact of the works that were being surveyed. Struth began his series of photographs of the populated interiors of galleries, churches and museums in an attempt to build a connection between the viewer and the image, and to try and initiate an understanding of the historical relationships between the viewer and act of making a new picture. With Kunsthistorisches Musuem III, Vienna he takes that process one step further, and by introducing a further dimension into the traditional relationship between the observer and the observed. Acknowledging, in part, the popularity of his earlier photographs, he explicitly includes the people who have made his earlier work popular, turning this work into a triumvirate of voyeurs, mixing up the traditional norms of photography and art in a revolutionary way.
One of the most influential photographers of the last quarter century, Struth has returned again and again to the locations that reverberate with silence. Kunsthistorisches Musuem III, Vienna builds on his Museum series, which he began in the late 1980s, when he began photographing visitors in museums looking at works of art. In time, the size of these images began to grow and the colors became less intense. Images of people in motion began to blur, often mimicking the movement, dynamism and sheer visual impact of the works that were being surveyed. Struth began his series of photographs of the populated interiors of galleries, churches and museums in an attempt to build a connection between the viewer and the image, and to try and initiate an understanding of the historical relationships between the viewer and act of making a new picture. With Kunsthistorisches Musuem III, Vienna he takes that process one step further, and by introducing a further dimension into the traditional relationship between the observer and the observed. Acknowledging, in part, the popularity of his earlier photographs, he explicitly includes the people who have made his earlier work popular, turning this work into a triumvirate of voyeurs, mixing up the traditional norms of photography and art in a revolutionary way.