Thomas Struth’s 2013 chromogenic print “Mountain, Anaheim, California” gives a different perspective on Disneyland (photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)
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The men and women who built the Walt Disney theme parks that the public has been flocking to for more than fifty years were known as imagineers. In his latest show at Marian Goodman, Düsseldorf-based German photographer Thomas Struth examines the intersection of human invention, engineering, and what he specifically calls “constructed imagination” by bringing together large-scale pictures he took while visiting Disneyland in California as well as several unique urban landscapes and other sites around the world that are invested in technological innovation. Each work stands on its own in a lush visual splendor, inviting the viewer into their beauty and mystery, even though some depict a fake world created for family vacations while others reveal cutting-edge technology that could change the future of humanity. In previous series, Struth has shown people looking at paintings or gathering in tourist spots, but there clearly are no men, women, or children to be seen in these 2009–13 photographs, even though the viewer is nonetheless compelled to search the chromogenic and inkjet prints for signs of life. Instead, Struth includes a robot in “Golems Playground, Georgia Tech, Georgia,” and there might or might not be a body under the blue sheet in “Figure, Charité, Berlin.”
Thomas Struth, “Measuring, Helmholitz-Zentrum, Berlin,” chromogenic print, 2012 (photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)
“The surprise of what we have collectively created becomes more evident when one takes a more general perspective,” Struth points out in the exhibition press release. “Showing real experimental physics, a twenty-first-century urban landscape, or a surgical robot in action reinforces the question: How should we judge what we see? More intimately, let us consider the vulnerability of the human body and soul under these circumstances. It’s all creation; it’s made. It’s not a given.” Once again, Struth has challenged us to reevaluate our expectations while also asking us to reexamine how we look at and experience both fantasy and reality, art and artifice.