"I saw myself seeing myself"
-Jacques Lacan
De Diego, E. (2005) "In the Meantime".
Thomas Struth: Making Time , 73-80.
This article focuses on Thomas Struth's photographic series about onlookers in a museum. Author Estrella De Diego quotes acclaimed intellectuals such as Marcel Proust and Jacques Lacan while analyzing Struth's series. At first glance, the photographs appear simple; groups of spectators gather around famous works of art. The images are immediately familiar to anyone who has wandered around an art museum before. As you spend more time with the photographs, you become like one of the photographed spectators and are eager to view what they are clustered around. De Diego, in accordance with Proust, notes, "it must be worthwhile if someone contemplates it in such a self-absorbed way". Attention alone, it seems, can be enough to validate something. The article dives into the psychology of the group; the more people are gathered around an object, the greater its importance. Those who look at a painting in a gallery both increase its significance and become a part of its history.
The idea of the spectator is one of the facets of my current series of photographs. It is amazing how an event is made more significant or relevant based on who is watching. In my series, people gather after an event has taken place. Their faces are turned towards an object or occurrence that is absent to the viewer of the photograph, yet present in the context of the image.
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