This catalogue accompanies a museum exhibition of the latest work of German artist, Thomas Struth. The touring show focuses on photographs Struth has made since his last major retrospective, which covered the years 1978–2010. The catalogue comprises 65 works (plus details) and includes all of the 30 works in the exhibition to create the most comprehensive book of Struth’s recent work.

Thomas Struth is renowned for his practice of creating singular images, each within strictly segregated subject fields: architecture, portraiture, landscape and, most recently, sites of technological and scientific research. Nature & Politics explores in depth diverse strands of Struth’s enquiry, whilst also elaborating the interstices between them, to present the most significant current monograph of the artist’s work.

In recent years technology and the constructed landscape have become overarching subjects for Struth. Photographing at sites of techno-industrial and scientific research, including physics institutes, pharmaceutical plants, space stations, dockyards, nuclear facilities and operating theatres – he has focused on machines which are some of the transformative instruments of our contemporary world, and edifices of technological production where the heights of human knowledge are enacted, debated and advanced. These works explore the aesthetics of innovation and experimentation through the recording of structural complexities and allude to the hidden structures of control, power and influence exerted by advanced technologies.

In the same period, Struth was working on two quite distinct projects. The first was Disneyland, a theme park which was famously constructed by reference to Walt Disney's memories of his trips across Europe, transforming the passive experience of watching and of fantasy into a latent reality in California. Struth was attracted to this ultimate human-crafted environment, where technology has facilitated the materialisation of images from Walt Disney's imagination.

The second project was the contested landscape of Israel and Palestine where Struth created a series of images which collapsed his strict subject fields, producing urban landscapes, portraits, landscapes and photographs of technology. Each photograph is a fragment which attempts to grasp the circumscribed reality of a region where coexistence has failed.

Struth seeks, in his own words, “to open the doors to what our minds have materialised and transformed into sculpture and to scrutinise what our contemporary world has created in places which are not accessible to most people.” His images penetrate and report on the material spaces of the human imagination, and they are born from an accelerated moment when technology and the image industry have brought physical reality and the imagination closer together

Thomas Struth (b. 1954) is internationally recognised for his wide-ranging work, which includes photographs of urban views and architecture, landscapes, portraits, museums and places of worship. He trained at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1973–80), and, during that time, he was the first artist in residence at the P.S.1 Studios in Long Island City. From 1993 to 1996 he was the first Professor of Photography at the newly founded Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe. He has exhibited all over the world, and a large number of monographs have been published of his oeuvre, including Thomas Struth (MACK, 2014), and Thomas Struth: Unconscious Places (Schirmer/Mosel, 2012).

本目录是配合德国艺术家托马斯·斯特鲁斯最新作品博物馆特展而制作的。这场巡回展览聚焦于斯特鲁斯自上一次大型回顾展（涵盖1978–2010年作品）之后创作的摄影作品。该目录收录了65件作品（含细节图），其中包括展览中的全部30件作品，共同构成了关于斯特鲁斯近期作品的最全面的专著。

托马斯·斯特鲁斯以创作独特影像而闻名，他的作品严格划分在不同的主题领域内：建筑、肖像、风景，以及最近的科技与科研场所。《自然与政治》深入探索了斯特鲁斯艺术探索中的各个不同分支，同时也阐释了这些分支之间的关联，呈现出这位艺术家当前最重要的作品专著。

近年来，科技与人造景观成为斯特鲁斯的核心创作主题。他在各类科技工业和科研场所进行拍摄，包括物理研究所、制药厂、太空站、造船厂、核设施和手术室等——他聚焦于那些堪称当代世界变革性工具的机器，以及那些践行、探讨和推动人类知识巅峰的科技生产场所。这些作品通过记录结构的复杂性，探索创新与实验的美学，并暗示了先进技术所施加的、隐藏的控制、权力和影响力结构。

同一时期，斯特鲁斯还在进行两个截然不同的项目。第一个是迪士尼乐园，这个主题公园的建造著名地借鉴了华特·迪士尼的欧洲旅行记忆，将观看和幻想的被动体验在加利福尼亚转化为一种潜在的现实。斯特鲁斯被这个极致的人造环境所吸引，在这里，科技促成了华特·迪士尼想象中影像的物质化呈现。

第二个项目是以色列和巴勒斯坦存在争议的景观，斯特鲁斯在那里创作了一系列打破自身严格主题分类的影像，融合了城市景观、肖像、风景和科技摄影。每一张照片都是一个片段，试图捕捉这个共存失败地区的有限现实。

用斯特鲁斯自己的话说，他力求“打开大门，让人们看到我们的思想所物化并转化为雕塑的东西，审视我们当代世界在大多数人无法触及的地方所创造的事物。”他的影像深入并记录了人类想象力的物质空间，它们诞生于一个科技和影像产业使物理现实与想象力愈发贴近的加速时代。

托马斯·斯特鲁斯（1954年生）因其涉猎广泛的作品而享誉国际，包括城市景观与建筑、风景、肖像、博物馆及宗教场所的摄影。他曾在杜塞尔多夫艺术学院学习（1973–1980年），期间成为长岛市P.S.1艺术中心的首位驻留艺术家。1993至1996年，他担任新成立的卡尔斯鲁厄设计学院的首位摄影教授。他的作品在全球范围内展出，其作品集已出版多部，包括《托马斯·斯特鲁斯》（MACK出版社，2014年）和《托马斯·斯特鲁斯：无意识之地》（Schirmer/Mosel出版社，2012年）。