During the autumn, he was awarded a scholarship from the Kunstakademie to live and work in New York for six months with a studio at PS1 and a modest grant of 5000 DM. He travelled to New York in December 1977, staying until September 1978.
The scholarship in New York offered an opportunity to concentrate intensively on photographing the streets of a different city. Over the course of several months, Struth photographed in various districts in Manhattan including Wall Street, Tribeca, SoHo, Chelsea, Midtown, Harlem as well as in Brooklyn, Queens and elsewhere, making two hundred black-and-white street photographs, invariably with a central perspective.
During the exhibition, eighteen prints were acquired by a New York lawyer and two friends for $50 each. This first-ever sale enabled his stay in New York to be extended for a further two months.