In contrast to his famed images of
museums and cultural sites—a series begun in 1989 that propelled him to the
forefront of late 20th-century photographers—Thomas Struth’s more recent works
explore the complex relationship between humans and technology. In Houston, he
photographed NASA’s full-scale mock-up of the International Space Station
submerged in a 40-foot-deep, 6.2-million-gallon pool—a facility in which
astronauts train for work in a weightless environment. Appropriately, the image
is both monumental and disorienting, measured against a grid of reflected
lights but seemingly untethered to earth.