In the book NARRENBÄUME, Wil­helm W. Reinke ad­dresses the am­bigu­ous re­la­tion­ship between human and nature. Naked people are some­times in a unity and some­times in con­trast to ex­press­ive trees - as a sym­bol of pure nature.

In the re­la­tion­ship of human bee­ings to nature, the tree has al­ways played a sym­bol­ic role, just think of the "tree of know­ledge" or the concept of the "fam­ily tree". People who live sur­roun­ded by trees are hap­pi­er, health­i­er and live longer. Trees provide shade, im­prove the cli­mate and en­rich the body and mind. Hu­mans as a "fool" are des­troy­ing the di­versity of the hab­it­at tree and nature.

These thoughts were taken up in the photo pro­duc­tion and in the end are in­ten­ded to stim­u­late the view­er to re­con­sider his be­ha­vi­or to­wards nature at least for a mo­ment. In the con­trasts light and shad­ow, black and white, light and dark, the "light paint­er" Reinke shows the mu­tu­al as­sign­ment of these con­nec­tions. The idea of "not eat­ing out of the tree of know­ledge" should be in­ter­preted fur­ther today, "to no longer con­sume it - and thus nature - but to pro­tect it and mul­tiply it again."

The pho­tos were taken in dif­fer­ent places around the world, such as Mad­a­gas­car, Spain, Ger­many, Italy, Aus­tria, France, USA and In­done­sia. Among the trees shown in­clude u.a. maple, birch, pear, beech, ginkgo, but also exot­ics such as baobab, giant se­quoia, date palm, cypress, dragon tree, eu­ca­lyptus, fig and even two-thou­sand-year-old olive trees.