Thomas Struth has been taking photographs of forests in different parts of the world since 1998.
Each of his ‘paradises’ – which he found in China, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Germany – is a piece of nature dedicated to a specific theme. The new edition of this volume is expanded with 11 unpublished photos and contains the entire series, to which have been added those taken in Peru, Florida and Hawaii.
Trees, branches and leaves create a dense texture that prevents us from seeing the horizon and the depth of the landscape, which we can only imagine. Struth’s glimpses of jungle mark the beginning of a new approach to the way the surface of photographic images captures our gaze, directing it in multiple directions. Thanks to their richness of detail, the images immerse us in a silence that must be listened to for a long time before we can learn its rules.
From early documentary portraits of families and cityscapes to the harmonious chaos of jungles, Thomas Struth’s eye has traveled the world looking for new ways to represent its complexity, finding the presence of the unconscious in the visible. In their essays in the book, psychologist Ingo Hartmann and art historian Hans Rudolf Reust shed light on our current understanding of so-called wilderness, its exploitation and its mystification.
