NONFICTION - Aug. 28, 1994

STRANGERS AND FRIENDS: Photographs 1986-1992 by Thomas Struth. (The MIT Press: $39.95; 108 pp.) German photographer Thomas Struth has chosen city streets, museum interiors and family portraits as his subjects. The streets are mostly empty, but the museums are usually crowded and chaotic. The portraits punctuate the book, like this 1988 portrait of his friend, Janice Guy, sewing. In his postscript Richard Sennett, a professor in the humanities at New York University, admires the directness of the camera’s gaze, and its emphasis on the viewing process, rather than an Avedon-style psychological revelation. They are a little chilly, these photographs, but precise and eerie.