The title of this image refers to the building in which it was taken: the Nara National Museum, a Japanese art museum devoted entirely to Buddhist art. However, the people in Todai-Ji, Interior Nara are as much the subject as the setting. German photographer Thomas Struth simulates the experience of the physicality of this sacred space using a wide-angle lens and a long exposure time, so that both the visitors in the foreground and the statues in the background are in focus. By using this technique, he establishes a parallel between the viewers looking at the sculptures in the museum and the viewers looking at his picture.

 Struth is best known for his photographs in which he shows well-known paintings in major museums and includes the surrounding architecture and visitors. As curator Gary Garrels wrote, Struth "asks us, the audience, to assume multiple roles. We share with the . . . visitors a relationship with the [art] in the photograph . . . We also share the view of the photographer, looking at this public. The final turn comes as we realize that we ourselves are in a museum, looking at a work of art. Our experience is no longer that of the voyeur; we are participants in the scene, not so different from the people in the photograph."