New Pictures from Paradise

In 1998, in anticipation of the approaching new millennium, Thomas Struth photographed the tropical rainforest in Daintree, in the north east of Australia. Afterwards, the artist captured woodlands, rain forests, and jungles in places such as China, Japan, Germany, Brazil, Peru, and the United States in what he has called his “most intuitive” works. He was interested in images that could be viewed independent of identification or classification: the full-frame presentation, the large-format depiction, and the explicitness and unique quality of the subject matter prompt a purely sensory-based perception process. The title of this body of work echoes this particular manner of perception of an overcrowded landscape, impossible to classify either in time or in place.