
Six Pictures of Paradise - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/101/in-our-nature/six-pictures-of-paradise-rp
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danieltillett
I have always been fascinated that people consider tropical rainforests
"paradise". They are one of the most difficult places to live with the heat,
humidity, disease, and dangerous flora and fauna. Fascinating places, but in
my mind far from paradise.

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mkramlich
visually they seem like paradise. full practical reality: no. the ideal we
should seek would have the best of both worlds.

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danieltillett
Yes. The closest I have ever experienced are the islands of the South Pacific.
You get the same lush vegetation, but with pleasant temperatures and few of
the nasty critters. Some of the Cook Islands are a very nice :)

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VieElm
It's interesting to me that the author spent years looking at these photos and
wrote a very long article about them and still doesn't seem to understand the
photographs. I think I spent less than a minute before I at least I think I
got something more out of it than what the author saw. I could be totally
misunderstanding the author though.

All the reasons Nigel gives for what makes those photos interesting miss the
point I think.

> "although any of us could have taken those pictures, only one person
> actually did"

> "Just knowing that these scenes aren’t the most beautiful places along the
> trail system provokes a rush of tenderness for that forest. It’s the same
> thing I feel looking at pictures of my wife caught unaware she’s being
> photographed, when she looks ordinary instead of radiant."

> "reducing each of Struth’s photographs to a list of the plant species it
> contained and some observations on the successional state of the forest. "

I notice this miss the point on artsy/literary stuff happens a lot when
talking to other engineers. It's like there's a blindness that some can't seem
to overcome. To see the pictures in another way, the keyword here used in the
article was "complexity". Look at one, and image this wasn't a photograph at
all. Imagine it if were an abstract painting, like a pollock painting. Forget
about the forest, and that there are plants in it, just focus a little bit
less and look at the lines. The author is looking at all the wrong details.
Struth here seems to care about the tangle of lines, the massive dark
structures contrasting with the little bits of tiny complex jumbles. I'd guess
the best I could do is to say to an engineer, try to write a program that
generates patterns like this. What would that look like? These aren't photos
of randomness, there is complex, sophisticated architecture in these plants
trying to fight for scraps of light. It's humbling and in a way reminds me of
other types of structures in nature like the superstructures in the cosmos,
like the CfA2 Great Wall[1]. Try and focus out a little, like I said, try and
see it as a painting. Turn off the forest, and then if you get it, turn it
back on, because context is important.

A good analogy here might be the 3D Stereograms that were popular in the 90's.
Some people looked at those things and couldn't see the 3D (I often couldn't)
but would say they see something.

[1]
[http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full/2004/31/aa0696/img12.g...](http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full/2004/31/aa0696/img12.gif)

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wonnage
Having art explained to you is like having a joke explained... now you "get"
it, but that's beside the point.

~~~
thyrsus
In my experience, art invokes several ideas at the same time. Nigel Pitman
explored several in these pictures, and VieElm pointed out another. Unlike
most jokes, it is satisfying to spend time with each of the ideas.

I'm no Thomas Struth, nor had I heard of him before this article, but a couple
years a ago I took several pictures in a similar spirit, of which I uploaded
four:
[http://thyrsus21.deviantart.com/gallery/](http://thyrsus21.deviantart.com/gallery/)

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percept
"...all of us were burning to write up whatever we learned in some technical
journal that, years later, an associate professor might glance at on his
coffee break."

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jacquesm
That's a beautiful article and as apt an illustration of the proverb not
seeing the wood for the trees as I've ever read.

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potench
I only see four photos (3 inline and 1 in the header). I'm on mobile safari.
Where are the other 2?

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lui8906
What a beautiful article.

