Thomas Struth, a leading proponent of large-scale color photography, began his work in photography creating typologies of cities, which stemmed from his studies with Bernd and Hilla Becher. First of his native Dusseldorf; then in 1977, of London. Above: Crosby Street,Soho, New York (1978). © Thomas Struth.

That same year he was awarded a scholarship which enabled him to live and work in New York for six months with a studio at PS1 and a modest grant of 5000 DM. He traveled to New York in December 1977, staying until September 1978.

Over the course of several months, Struth photographed in various districts in Manhattan including Wall Street, Tribeca, SoHo, Chelsea, Midtown, Harlem as well as in Brooklyn, Queens and elsewhere, making two hundred black-and-white photographs of the streets, invariably with a central perspective.

A selection of these photographs were presented as an exhibition at his studio at PS1 under the title Streets of New York City: Central Perspectives. The exhibition consisted of forty-five black-and-white prints, each 30-by-40-inches, mounted on museum board but unframed, and installed in double rows, in blocks of different sizes. There were separate blocks of photographs for each of the districts. 

110^th Street at 2^nd Avenue, Harlem, New York (1978). © Thomas Struth.

Water Street, Financial District, New York (1978). © Thomas Struth.

“I was interested in the possibility of the photographic image revealing the different character or the ‘sound’ of the place," he wrote. "I learned that certain areas of the city have an emblematic character; they express the city’s structure. How can the atmosphere of one place be so different from another, and why? This question has always been important to me. Who has the responsibility for the way a city is? The urban structure is an accretion of so many decisions.”

During the exhibition at PS1, eighteen prints were acquired by a New York lawyer and two friends for $50 each. This first-ever sale enabled Struth to extend his stay in New York for an additional two months. 

Leonard Street, Tribeca, New York (1978) © Thomas Struth.

A set of twelve 30-by-40-inch images from the series acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1982 is on view through February 16, along with a number of Struth’s large-scale color images, including the iconic Pantheon, Rome (1990), from the Museum series.

Thomas Struth: Photographs. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue (at 82nd Street), New York, NY. Information.

Read Thomas Struth’s 2011 interview with Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker.