Paradise 25, Yuquehy, Brazil, 2001

"At this point, 'Paradise' consists of twenty-five photographs I'm just beginning to understand. Intuition is an old word, but many things sprout from inner processes and needs and then take on a form. My approach to the jungle pictures might be said to be new, in that my initial impulses were pictorial and emotional, rather than theoretical. They are 'unconscious places' and thus seem to follow my early city pictures. The photographs taken in the jungles of Australia, Japan and China as well as in the California woods, contain a wealth of delicately branched information, which makes it almost impossible, especially in large formats, to isolate single forms. One can spend a lot of time in front of these pictures and remain helpless in terms of knowing how to deal with them...They present a kind of empty space: emptied to elicit a moment of stillness and internal dialogue. You have to be able to enjoy this silence in order to communicate with yourself -and eventually with others". (Thomas Struth in Artforum, May 2002)