Each of Thomas Struth's "paradises" is a piece of nature devoted to a specific overarching theme. In his photographs measuring up to 9 by 11 feet in size, Struth draws the viewer into the magical semidarkness of forests and jungles, the impenetrable and yet bright green of the trees, bushes, and undergrowth, of tropical plants, rampant jungle vegetation, and mossy brooks. Struth found his paradises in China, Japan, Australia, Brazil, and Germany, where he discovered suitable material in the forests of Bavaria.

This book contains the entire series of 25 photographs as full-page plates. In their essays, psychologist Ingo Hartmann and art historian Hans Rudolf Reust each shed light from their own particular angle on our current understanding of so-called untamed nature, its exploitation and mystification, not to mention as a basis for utopias.