The image in the EJAF Portfolio is titled Odenwald, 2006. The Odenwald is a low mountain range in Hesse, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg in Germany.
Thomas Struth was born in 1954, in Geldern, Germany. He was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts, Düsseldorf, Germany. He began his career as a painter and then studied photography at the studio of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Their influence is evident in Struth’s early work of cityscapes of New York, Japan and cities of Europe. In discussing his work, he said, “I noticed these apartments - they're all over the world, more or less, but they don't appear as subject matter anywhere in art, and if they do appear anywhere, it's in leftist newspapers or as part of a complaint about social circumstances. In these cases, they're photographed very badly, as if to stress the ugliness. I thought it would be more interesting to photograph them very handsomely and precisely as a means of mental defense, to give these objects and the people who live in them more of a voice, but not in such an easy way.” In the Museum Photographs series using large-format color prints, Struth captured anonymous individuals and crowds looking at iconic works of Western art in the world’s most popular museums. In his numerous large-scale landscapes Struth encourages the viewer to feel uncannily present before vistas both close-range and distant. He taught photography at the Staatlichen Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany and was awarded the Spectrum International Photography Prize of Lower Saxony.