For The Continuing Presence of the Past: Struth’s Pergamon Museum I, Berlin: In what ways could Struth’s photograph be construed as an essay on the nature of public and private space?
What will be an ideal response?
The nature of public and private space as a constant debate in ancient Greek culture. The play Antigone demonstrates the extreme difficulty of reconciling the private and public spheres—one of Greek philosophy’s most troubling and troubled themes—even as it cries out for the rational action and sound judgment that might have spared its characters their tragedy. According to Socrates, the Form of Goodness is “the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and . . . this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.”
In Thomas Struth’s Pergamon Museum I, Berlin, the photographer has staged a number of spectators around the work of Classical antiquity to animate what otherwise could seem a cold and foreboding work. Struth’s staging of the “spectators” as a director would extras on a film set, with attention to the mise en scène of the shot, nevertheless contains various improbable or fictitious scenarios, such as a restoration expert passing an artifact to a tourist. Interestingly, Struth, like the Form of Goodness for Socrates, becomes the “immediate source” that guides the spectators’ public action. This, of course, is possibly very different from how the actors would have acted if they were not in this public format. Struth’s work, therefore, once again highlights the tension in people’s public actions versus their private actions and thoughts.
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