Reading – Playing - Recording - Listening

Best known as an important photographic artist producing large-format conceptual image series of architecture, nature and museum interiors, Thomas Struth’s latest series is certainly a surprise. On this occasion, the focus is on music: sound and image come together in an exciting symbiosis. In September 2015, equipped with the Leica SL, the photographer followed a music production at the concert hall of Marienmünster Abbey:

“The nature and terminology of the many elements involved in music can be applied just as easily to other artistic fields – terminology such as architecture, dynamics, composition, counterpoint, and so on.

Frank Bungarten and I became friends at school, and for many decades I followed his artistic journey at a distance, while always staying in contact and exchanging ideas. One subject we are passionate about is how the diversity of human existence in reflected in composition and its interpretation. In questions of originality and interpretation, music and photography are, of course, similar.

In autumn this year I was able to be present at one of Frank's recordings, and I experienced first-hand how fine but amazing the differences between each take can be, despite there being just one interpreter, playing a piece by one composer and on the same instrument.

The photos – somewhere between casual and intentional – were shot with a Leica, mostly without a tri-pod and not really intended for publication; but they do convey an impression of the days spent together at the recording studio.”