He lives and works in Berlin and New York. His work displays a variety of themes and subjects. There are depictions of family portraits; jungles and comprehensive cityscapes. Struth studied painting from 1973 to 1980 at the Düsseldorf Academy. In 1976, a student exhibition was held at the Academy, so Struth also took part by displaying 49 photos using centralized symmetry and perspective to show the deserted streets of Düsseldorf. They were simple images and no form of digital manipulation was used. A year later, Struth travelled for two months to England and in 1979 he went to Paris to take pictures of cityscapes. Soon he started to make mostly black and white series in Rome, 1984; Edinburgh, 1985; Tokyo, 1986 and in other places.