C-print
184.2 x 231.9 cm
Urban landscapes, family portraits, jungles, forests, and museum interiors are the handful of motifs Thomas Struth has worked on (in series) since leaving the Düsseldorfer Kunstakadmie in 1980. In 1998, Struth initiated a series of photographs of woods and rainforests titled Paradise. The series of more than twenty photographs presents “unconscious places”: the jungle remains – like Struth’s cities – anonymous. Photographed from a central perspective, the vast landscape in Paradise 7, from Daintree, Australia, shows a host of details but no real focal point. The photographs contain a wealth of delicately branched information, which makes it almost impossible to isolate single forms. Consequently, Struth refers to them as illegible text. Because of Paradise’s consistent “all-over” nature, it functions as a membrane for meditation – an empty space, emptied to elicit a moment of stillness and internal dialogue.
*1954 Geldern, Germany
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