It takes a special eye to make exciting things look incredibly boring. But that’s German photographer Thomas Struth’s whole thing, he finds the everyday in the fantastical.
For this latest series he was allowed into CERN, the Swiss nuclear research institution where the most cutting edge experiments in science are happening, where particles are being smashed together, black holes being created, Nobel prizes being won.
But you don’t see any of that world-changing excitement in his photo. Instead, he captures empty labs and boxes of tools and discarded equipment, the detritus of brilliance. He focuses on the endless curving pipes, the stacks of protective concrete blocks, the brightly coloured metal walkways. There are almost no people here, no scientists working, no discoveries being made. There’s just quiet mundanity; a locker waiting to be emptied, equipment waiting to be put away, cables in a tangled mess, a stool left in the way, waiting to be tripped on.
On the one hand, this is about how humanity’s intellectual ambition manifests itself physically. But on the other, this place of huge significance, of scientific importance, has been stripped of its essence, made mundane and banal, made normal, everyday. And somehow, it has become even more in the process.
