“I wanted to make photographs in which everything was so complex and detailed that you could look at them forever and never see everything.”

Thomas Struth initially studied painting at the Dusseldorf academy under the German artist Gerhard Richter, before turning to photography. Since then, Struth’s well-known large-scale cityscapes and museum photographs have made him one of the preeminent European art photographers of our time. Struth’s knowledge of painting is evident in his mural-scale images, highlighting his mastery of formal composition and color.

During the late 1990s, Struth began to look at landscapes, in particular jungle scenes, traveling to Australia, Japan, Southwest China and Peru. These jungle-scapes are as complex are they are calming. It is fitting that Stuth’s series is aptly named Pictures from Paradise. Struth’s work has focused on wild nature, not only his own representations of what can be viewed as paradise, but also questioning its representation within cultures.

Through these lush and steamy images taken at various locations throughout the world, Struth has taken on the role as a world traveler and storyteller. Each image conveying a texture so dense, it hinders the viewer’s eye from even entering into the misty and overwhelmingly verdant landscape, no matter how tangible it may seem. This complexity is masterfully conveyed in the featured lot, Paradise 26 (Bougainville), Palpa, Peru. The richness of detail, lush crimson and fuchsia shades, evokes sultriness within the composition. Although the subject matter may, at first glance, appear conventional, Struth’s keen photographic eye captures an intricacy and density in its “all over” nature that envelops us. Perhaps drawing us in closer to our own stillness and meditations: our own paradise.