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Thomas Struth

(German, born 1954)

The Okutsu Family in Tatami Room, Yamaguchi

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Object Details

Artist

Thomas Struth

Date

1996

Medium

Chromogenic print

Dimensions

Overall/Frame: 58 × 69 × 2 inches (147.3 × 175.3 × 5.1 cm)

Credit Line

The Ames Family Collection of Contemporary Photography

Object
Number

97.025

In the mid-1980s Thomas Struth began a portrait series of individuals and family groups following co(…)

In the mid-1980s Thomas Struth began a portrait series of individuals and family groups following collaborative projects with psychoanalyst Ingo Hartmann, where they analyzed family snapshots that Hartmann’s patients brought with them to therapy. Struth, using a large-format view camera, let his sitters arrange themselves in their homes and waited “for the instant in which every family member was vibrantly present” to capture the perfect image. Here the Okutsu family sits side-by-side in their tatami room, so named for the straw mat floor covering common to Japanese homes. Overall, this large-scale image has an exceptionally paintinglike presence. This portrait is psychologically charged yet vaguely disconcerting, as the viewer faces the relaxed but powerfully implacable gazes of each family member. The photograph truly embraces the personal and cultural dynamics that condition how we see others and ourselves, as well as how our individual and collective identities condition such perceptions. (“15 Minutes: Exposing Dimensions of Fame,” curated by undergraduate members of Cornell’s History of Art Major’s Society and presented at the Johnson Museum April 16 – July 24, 2016)

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