Struth was born in Geldern (Germany) in 1954. He graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1980, having successively studied painting under Gerhard Richter and photography under Bernd Becher. As a photographer, Struth belongs to the first generation of the Becher school. The penetrating gaze that he directs at his subjects demonstrates the influence of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) photographers. However, the “typological” approach of Bernd and Hilla Becher truly lives on in the sense of development in Struth’s works, which extract similar images from different subjects through series that deal with specific themes. His best-known series includes “Unconscious Places,” “Museum Photographs,” “Portraits,” and “New Pictures from Paradise.” The photographer has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1980, documenta IX in 1992, the Biennale of Sydney in 1998, the Berlin Biennale in 2004, and Venice’s Biennale Architettura in 2012. Struth was awarded the SPECTRUM Internationaler Preis für Fotografie by the Stiftung Niedersachsen (Foundation of Lower Saxony) in 1997. His works are held in the collections of major museums around the world, such as the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Tate Modern (London), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), MoMA (New York), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), the Dallas Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Fondazione MAST (Bologna).