Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

man in the blue shirt. The man next to him seems to be about to say something to
the woman on his right. The man in white leaning on the desk has a tour guide in
his hand and might be verifying some information he just read.
This photo, with its implication of sound and movement, is reminiscent of
a film still in which the work of art plays a role as background image, as tableau,
and as object of contemplation and discussion. By contrast, a recent photograph
not part of the series in the 2002 catalog does not itself resemble, but seems to
depict a movie theater representation. National Museum of Art, Tokyo 1999 shows
a blurry mass of people in front of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830),
which is shown in a glass case. The painting was part of a Japanese-French
exchange of national treasures, and is used by Struth to connect “an encounter of
separate historical moments with the more fraught and complicated clash of
cultures” (Hambourg and Eklund 163). The dark room with the crowd seen from
behind, and with the white glass case which resembles a movie screen onto which
Delacroix’s painting is projected, not only gives the impression of attending a
film spectacle, but moreover, puts the photographer’s camera in the position from
where the screen image must be projected. In other words, the camera portraying
the scene seems to be its origin and source. Thus, the photo not only gives the
impression of recording a documentary projection on Delacroix’s famous
painting, but moreover, seems itself to create that projection. In short, the camera
gives the illusion of both witnessing and producing an instance of filmic ekphrasis
in the form of an art documentary.
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