Thomas Struth, “Tien An Men, Beijing,” Chromogenic print, 1997 (Gift of Graciela and Neal Meltzer, 2002)
Who: Thomas Struth
What: “Thomas Struth: Photographs”
Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St., Gallery 851, 212-535-7710
When: Daily through February 16, recommended admission $12-$25
Why: German photographer Thomas Struth, who lives and works in Berlin and New York, gets a kind of mini-greatest-hits show at the Met, consisting of works from throughout his nearly forty-year career, primarily from the museum’s collection. The exhibition ranges from Struth’s small black-and-white photos of empty streets in New York City in 1978 to his large-scale color photograph of the Pantheon in Rome as a group of people gather inside in 1990 to a never-before-shown 2013 picture of a woman in the midst of major surgery, her body barely visible amid wires, tubes, and other medical equipment. Struth, who specializes in taking photographs of people looking at art and architecture, goes to the next level in “Tien An Men, Beijing,” in which he captures a man taking a picture of a woman standing in front of a lion that is looking down at her while a portrait of Mao hangs in the distance, the former Chinese leader surveying it all. Other highlights by Struth, who trained under Gerhard Richter and Bernd and Hilla Becher, include “Hot Rolling Mill, ThyssenKrupp Steel, Duisburg,” depicting a steel processing plant; “Paradise 13, Yakushima, Japan,” a shot of a moss-covered section of a forest; and “Milan Cathedral (Facade), Milan,” a daunting shot of the Italian cathedral dominating the little people walking along the front steps.