Thomas Struth "New pictures from Paradise"

Thomas Struth's 'New Pictures from Paradise' looks at various forests around the world and how densely populated with wildlife they are, how beautiful they are all before the intrusion of humans within that area. Struth was looking how the forests looked prior to any human activity within these areas and how these paradises are referenced and analysing the representations of these places from different cultures throughout history.

Within the photos Struth has used a clever technique in which he doesn't allow us to see very far into the depth by showing the trees, branches and leaves much closer to the foreground to create a much denser image and preventing us from seeing the horizon of the images. The images are very busy with lots of dense plant life covering the image going all over the place in every direction. This can cause the viewers eyes to be moving all over the image seeing every specific part due to the rich detail in colour used by Struth. I love how due to there being no real physical subject within the photo it creates an almost silence within each frame that makes you stop and want to listen to wonder if you can hear any noises like you are actually present in the forests yourself.

Now when it comes to how this relates to my own work, i am looking at trying to grab the viewers gaze and almost direct them to specific points of interests which can be anything from the shapes, textures, composition of the trees, gates, fences, branches and dense bushes and shrubs. By doing this the viewer is automatically drawn to the image and makes them feel as though they are present in the image. Another idea is that Struth has focused on forests where most likely there can be a lot of moving elements which would naturally cause someone to look at if they saw it move. However, by taking an image it almost makes the viewers think that it's a video as they would naturally expect the specific tree, branch or even gate to move. I adopted this technique for my own work and began making sure that whether i felt there was a part of the woodlands that people would feel connected with the most as if they were actually there, and caught an image of it either just moving or at a point where you cannot tell if it is still or moving.

In conclusion, Thomas Struth's 'New Pictures from Paradise' uses clever compositional techniques that structures how the viewer is supposed to view the image and what specific parts are important. For my own work i have focused on how i compose the images and made sure that everything that i want to be clearly on view in the foreground and anything else is either neutralised by darkness so that it isn't as prominent and catches the viewers attention when i don't particularly want them to. Overall i found Struth's work inspiring and has helped me to focus more in depth on how i compose my images for future projects down the line.