Images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Thomas Struth.

Images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Thomas Struth.

I want to reconsider how the process of imagination and fantasy works in general, how something which has built up in someone’s mind has materialized and become reality. The German expression ‘sich etwas ausmalen’—to paint something in one’s head—refers to the picturing capacity of the human brain. It is a condition, without which we cannot create anything. My focus was particularly drawn to the ambiguity between what Walt Disney had remembered from his trips to Europe and how it was later rebuilt as a kind of latent reality in California.—Thomas Struth

Düsseldorf-based photographer Thomas Struth examines the industry of fantasy with his photographs of Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Beautiful and otherworldly, Struth’s Disneyland is even more surreal than normal. His depiction of the self-proclaimed “Happiest Place on Earth” is sterile and devoid of the usually omnipresent crowds, revealing this iconic site of constructed fantasy as quite the peculiar place.

Struth’s photographs are on view through February 28, 2014 at Marian Goodman Gallery in NYC.

Images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Thomas Struth.

Images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Thomas Struth.

Images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Thomas Struth.

Images courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Thomas Struth.